Los Angeles
Responses from more than 70,000 academics at more than 4,300 institutions world-wide were considered in a recent survey that ranked 959 institutions of higher learning.
The recently published annual survey conducted by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), provided a comparative assessment of dozens of subject areas across institutions—nine University of California (UC) campuses were included. Overall, according to a Times report, schools in the UC system dropped in their rankings over the previous year.
The good news was that two California schools continued to rank among the top ten universities in the world—UC Berkeley tied with Harvard at number three and UCLA ranked number seven. Yet they too saw some erosion in rankings in key subject areas—Berkeley’s performance declined in 15 areas, while UCLA’s performance rankings slipped in 22 subject areas.
Overall, although UC schools showed improvement over the previous year in at least two dozen categories, they experienced declines in at least 80 categories.
Observers believe continued funding woes, growing international competition, and declining enrollment among international students has negatively impacted the international rankings of schools in the UC system.
Despite the apparent declines, QS Research Director Ben Sowter stressed in a press statement, “To be clear, it’s going to be some time before the U.S.’s preeminence as a higher-education research nation could reasonably be said to be in dispute.” Sowter also pointed to an increased focus on national research programs that is driving university competition internationally.
QS is the largest higher education network in the world. It connects universities, business schools, and students and is at the forefront of developing and implementing comparative data to highlight the relative strength of institutions.
To learn how a university ranked in a particular subject visit the QS World University Rankings by Subject at http://www.iu.qs.com/university-rankings/. For additional information regarding the survey visit http:// www.iu.qs.com/academic-survey-responses/.