Berkeley rises in new world university rankings

Despite a year that saw significant cuts in state funding, UC Berkeley rose a step on the list of the world’s Top 10 universities in new rankings from the Times Higher Education.

Berkeley placed ninth in this year’s rankings, up from 10th last year, according to the rankings from the Times, an educational news publication in the United Kingdom.

The Times’ website notes that Berkeley is where “Vitamin E was identified, a lost Scarlatti opera found, the flu virus identified and America’s first no-fault divorce law drafted.”

Cal Tech again topped the list, while Harvard, last year’s second-place school, fell to fourth.

Altogether five UC campuses were among the top 50 on the list. UCLA came in 13th, UC Santa Barbara 35th, San Diego 38th and Davis 44th.

The new rankings come just after U.S. News and World Report again named Berkeley the world’s top national public university. And in reputation rankings from Times Higher Education, Berkeley placed fifth, based on a survey of 17,500 academics worldwide.

And in the U.S. News & World Report 2013 Guide to America’s Best Graduate Schools, released earlier this year, Berkeley maintained its overall rankings in engineering (3rd) and business (7th), moved up two places in law (7th) and fell one place in education (13th).

Berkeley’s graduate programs place at the top of U.S. News’s most recent rankings (2009) as well, often beating or tying private universities including Stanford and the Ivy Leagues. Berkeley took or shared first place in English, sociology, history (tied with Princeton and Stanford), psychology (tied with Stanford), chemistry (tied with CalTech and MIT), and computational science (tied with Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Stanford). In addition, Berkeley took or shared 2nd place in biosciences, math and statistics; 3rd place in earth science; 5th place in physics; and 6th in economics and political science.