Caltech Ranks As Top Research School Again

Pasadena’s own California Institute of Technology has been rated Best Research University in the world for the fifth year in a row by the Times Higher Education magazine in the United Kingdom.

In a report released Wednesday, the magazine rated three other schools in California among the top 20 research universities – Stanford University which ranked No. 3 this year from No. 4 in 2014, UC Berkeley at No. 13 from No. 8, and UCLA at No. 16, down from No. 12.

Sixty-three U.S. institutions were among the top 200 in the World University rankings, down from 74 last year. Phil Baty, editor of the rankings magazine edition, said cuts in higher education spending in the U.S. could have made their impact in the rankings. He noted institutions in China, Germany and the Netherlands rose in the ranking probably as a result of the higher investments in universities in those countries.

“The U.S. will have to raise its game to ensure its dominance does not erode,” Baty said in the announcement.

After Caltech, the rest of those in the Top Ten were Oxford University, Stanford, the University of Cambridge, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Imperial College of London, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the University of Chicago.

In a statement, Caltech President Thomas Rosenbaum said the ranking emphasizes the school’s ability to venture into “unexplored realms” as one of its major strengths.

“It also points to the competitive nature of higher education, where maintaining a culture of intellectual risk taking is essential to attract the most creative and original scholars, scholars who have choices among many exceptional academic institutions across the world,” Rosenbaum said.

Times Higher Education ranks universities according to research reputation, using income from research, the amount of scholarly publications and how international the students and faculty are as its major scoring categories.

Other California campuses made it to the top 150, with UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego tied at No. 39, UC Davis at No. 44 with the University of Hong Kong, USC at No. 68, UC Irvine at No. 106 with the University of Mannheim in Germany and UC Santa Cruz at No. 144 with the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.