December 16, 2004

UCSD Cited Among World's 'Best' Universities

By Pat JaCoby

The University of California, San Diego is among the world’s top 25 universities, according to a new global ranking by The (London) Times Higher Education Supplement.

The list produced by the publication ranked UCSD as 24th in the table of the world’s 200 best universities.

Four of the top five universities are in the U.S.; Oxford University in the United Kingdom was fifth. Harvard University was ranked first in the world, followed by UC-Berkeley, second; MIT, third, and Cal Tech, fourth.

Universities were placed in the table with the help of findings from a survey for the Times of 1,300 academics in 88 countries. They were asked to name the best institutions in the fields about which they felt knowledgeable.

The table also included data on the amount of cited research produced by faculty members as an indicator of intellectual vitality, the ratio of faculty to student numbers and a university’s success in attracting foreign students and internationally renowned academics in the global market for education.

John O’Leary, editor of the publication, said: “leading universities increasingly define themselves in terms of international competition. By taking account of the views of academics from across five continents and using the most up-to-date statistics, our ranking gives an informed picture of the world’s top universities.”

Others in the top 25 were Cambridge University, six; Stanford, seven; Yale, eight; Princeton, nine; ETH Zurich, 10; London School of Economics, 11; Tokyo University, 12; University of Chicago, 13; Imperial College of London, 14; University of Texas, Austin, 15; Australian National University, 16; Beijing University, 17; National University of Singapore, 18; Columbia University, 19; UC-San Francisco, 20; McGill University, 21; Melbourne University, 22; Cornell, 23; UCSD, 24 and Johns Hopkins, 25. UCLA was ranked 26th.

Media contact: Pat JaCoby, 858 534-7404