What we’ve all been waiting for…
Yes, it’s another new world ranking. This time from the previously unheard of Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) from Saudi Arabia. The website offers little information about the organisation but we do know that the US has the lion’s share of the top 100 places:
The distribution of top 100 institutions among countries is as follows: USA (58), England (7), France (5), Japan (5), Israel (4), Switzerland (4), Canada (3), Germany (3), Australia (2), Netherlands (2), Denmark (1), Finland (1), Italy (1), Norway (1), Scotland (1), South Korea (1), and Sweden (1).
The detailed methodology is also available on the CWUR website. Anyway, the Top 10 is as follows:
Top 10
- Harvard
- MIT
- Stanford
- Cambridge
- Caltech
- Princeton
- Oxford
- Yale
- Columbia
- Berkeley
And the UK placings in the Top 100 are:
4 Cambridge
7 Oxford
28 Imperial
31 UCL
60 Edinburgh
76 Manchester
97 Nottingham
98 Bristol
So, overall not that dissimilar from the SJTU Academic Ranking of World Universities or the QS table. Will it gain a niche in the rankings market? Time will tell but at first sight it doesn’t seem to be sufficiently distinctive to attract a major profile.
Registrarism 
Hello, this is Nadim Mahassen, the director of the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR).
One might ask, why a new ranking? Some rankings, such as the Shanghai Ranking, rely mainly on research indicators. Other rankings, such as QS and the Time Higher Education rankings, place a great deal of emphasis on opinion based surveys. Up to now, there has been no ranking measuring the quality of the learning environment as well as research without relying on surveys and university data submissions, and this is what the CWUR ranking tries to achieve.
I’d like to mention that, apart from the very top institutions, the CWUR ranking differs significantly from the Shanghai ranking. For example, l’École Polytechnique, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in France, is ranked 301-400 in the Shanghai ranking, while its CWUR rank is 61 (because of the high quality of education students receive there and also because of the high proportion of alumni who are CEOs of major companies).
Nadim – thank you so much for the comment – very much appreciated. It draws a helpful distinction between your ranking and the others. I think all I can do is wish you good luck with the endeavour!
Hi Paul,
Here is some recent news from the University of Texas at Austin http://www.utexas.edu/news/2012/07/05/university-of-texas-ranked-no-30-among-world-universities/
Awesome service !!! Excellent job, Nadim !!!
I was hoping to see University of Waterloo some where in the 1st 100s though.
Theo
The Ranking is out again and it has enhanced it’s methodology!