The huge gap is, as you say, between Harvard and the four who come second equal. Just one reservation: do they attribute the Nobel and Fields to the Uni where the work was done or to the current employer of the winner?
Of course, an alternative view is that of the top five, two are in San Francisco and three in Cambridge.
dearieme - current employer.
I was surprised that one of the Universities that gave me a bit of paper was ranked 37th. The University of Maryland College Park is best known as a basketball power house.
Why are so many USA unis in the top 50?
The criteria seems slanted towards the quality of a universities research work rather than the quality of it's teaching work. Although I imagine that there is quite a bit of correlation between the two.
Oh well, if you can just buy in Nobellists, it means that Harvard's lead is perhaps a matter of its being much the richest. It also means that Cambridge and Oxford are doomed to a continuing plunge compared to all the leading US Universities.
I'll have to update - I have last year's list.
In my humble opinion, there are too few Nobel Prize winners to use it as an accurate measure of institutional quality.
Then, Bob V, we must all be grateful to the Economists for inventing their spurious Nobel prize.
Canada had four only in the top 100. Certainly Nobel prize winners may not be employed at the university or institute where they did the work, since it is usually long afterwards that the prize is earned.
I thought Harvard was supposed to be cheap in paying its faculty, relying a lot on the prestige factor. I suppose the shining stars are able to negotiate well.
Oh, I thought of an analogy for the point I was trying to make. Judging schools based on the number of Nobel Laureates they have is like judging a golfer based on the number of hole in one's they've had. Sure, better golfers will have more hole in one's, but there will be a lot of error associated with the measure.
Bob
Yes, sure. But the number of Nobel prizes is just one of five factors that count. The number of citations in Science and Nature magazines is also important.
Hmm I see they score them on size.
How does that work then?
Until I noticed that, I found the whole thing a bit silly. I mean - who really thinks Sheffield or Birmingham are "better" than St. Andrews, which doesn't even make the list at all.
I suppose bigger=better, which probably explains why so many US institutions are on the list.
I almost believed it was real then I spotted where Sheffield and Nottingham were ranked and pissed myself laughing.
Nice spoof but putting crud like that in the top 100 gives the game away.
Even if the list didnt include any British universities, my family still thinks the best education is in England.
My dad, grandfather and uncles were born/raised during colonial sudan so england for them means everything.
I would like to go to the US (or england) for grad school but my family doesn't consider America a real real country
Commenting by HaloScan
