Cambridge knocks Harvard off the top of QS World university ratings
The University of Cambridge has knocked Harvard University off the top of the QS World University Ratings, as the U.K. establishment’s number of academic citations rose.
Cambridge reversed places with Harvard, which had headed the list since 2004, as it was voted the best for research quality, QS, a provider of information to higher education, said in a statement. Yale retained its third place from last year.
“The surprise to some will be a U.K. institution at the top of the table instead of a U.S. institution” according to Ben Sowter, head of division for the QS intelligence unit and a University of Nottingham graduate.
“Cambridge has taken a good step forward in their citations per faculty measure and Harvard has taken a slight step back on their faculty-student measure, perhaps due to a well-documented hiring freeze that happened in 2008.”
The QS rankings are compiled by surveying each institution’s reputation among academics and employers, the proportion of international students and staff, the number of citations and the ratio of students to staff. More than 15,000 academics were surveyed.
“While university league tables tend to over-simplify the range of achievements at institutions, it is particularly pleasing to note that the excellence of the transformative research -- research that changes people’s lives -- carried out at Cambridge is so well regarded by fellow academics worldwide,” Steve Young, senior pro-vice-chancellor, said in a statement on the university’s website.
It costs £ 3,290 pounds (5,089 US dollars) a year to study an undergraduate course at Cambridge during 2010-2011 compared with 34,976 USD a year at Harvard, according to each university’s website.
The QS top 10 featured six U.S.-based universities and four from the U.K., with the University of Oxford in sixth place behind University College London in fourth and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in fifth.
Switzerland’s ETH Zurich was the highest placed university outside of the U.K. and U.S. in 18th place, ahead of Montreal- based McGill University and Australian National University in Canberra completing the top 20.
“Germany, Spain, Italy and France, to a certain degree, have done much better this year so we’re seeing a reasonably significant step forward for continental Europe,” Sowter said. “Asia, in broad terms, continues to go from strength to strength.”
The University of Hong Kong was the highest-ranked Asian university, moving up a place to 23rd.
Times Higher Education will be publishing its own list of world university rankings later this month, the London-based publisher said in an e-mailed statement. The publisher said that it was QS former partner.
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The comparison is inaccurate, Cambridge is a state-funded public university, Harvard is private institution.
So the real cost for an undergraduate course at Cambridge will be more than the 5,089 US dollars tuition fee they charge to their students, you will have to add the hundreds of millions of pounds Cambridge receives from British government education, teaching and research grants.
While Harvard University not only does not cost the taxpayers a single penny, but it is also a financially independent corporation that grants thousands of scholarships to people who can´t afford to pay for education.
In the end, it is probably more expensive to study in Cambridge.
No mention of costs in the comparison, so Jose either didn't read the article or perhaps couldn't take it in.
How nice that a British educational facility is the best in the world. Time for Oxford to improve its game, perhaps?
My respects to Cambridge hard-earned rankings. Congratulations on that.
This is the comparison the article makes in terms of costs of tuition fees and the one I was referring to:
”It costs £ 3,290 pounds (5,089 US dollars) a year to study an undergraduate course at Cambridge during 2010-2011 compared with 34,976 USD a year at Harvard, according to each university’s website.“
Like I said,it is innacurate to say that ”5,089 US dollars is “the cost” per year to study an undergraduate course “compared” to a year in Harvard.
Definitely, we all know that £ 3,290 pounds is THE FEE Cambridge charges to undergraduate students, but the real costs, I don´t know, but it is certainly much, much higher than that.
Cambridge is a great university and if it is number one today it is because it deserves it. It is cheap for the alumni-ae under its endowment scheme.
But it is a fiction that Harvard is expensive. Ask any Harvard graduate about it and you will learn from them that Harvard is one of the cheapest universities in the world and that they even give donations to their alma mater long after they had graduated, a fine american tradition.
First of all you don´t need any money to go to Harvard, the whole scheme it´s all based on merit not on money and the school´s business is not the student´s tuition fees but their achievements.
Once you´ve been admitted to Harvard University, and that´s the hardest part of the whole process, after passing all the tests, all you need to do is to take your Acceptance Letter to any bank across the street and they will be very happy to finance all your education expenses at Harvard.
When you graduate, you´ll easily land a good job at any american, japanese or european corporation and for the salary that you´ll get, more than a 100 thousand US a year, paying your student loan back will be a piece of cake, it will be the cheapest bargain you ever get in your life.
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