Rice rises to top 50

By Katherine Hsu     9/23/10 7:00pm

London's Times Higher Education magazine's newly released university rankings place Rice among the top 50 universities in the world, a marked increase from last year's rank at 100th place. Rice is the only university in Texas to appear on the Times Higher Education's list of top 200 schools worldwide, and is ranked 29th among the 81 universities on the list from the United States and Canada. "The top 200 universities in the world represent only a tiny fraction of world higher education and any institution that makes it into this table is truly world-class," Ann Mroz, editor of Times Higher Education, said. "Being ranked 47 in the world's top 200 is an impressive achievement."

When news of Rice's 47th place became public, President David Leebron said he was pleased with the change in Rice's ranking from last year.

"While I have traditionally had a deep suspicion of rankings, I'm happy to see that Times Higher Education has focused on universities' quality of education, research and impartation of knowledge as opposed to historic reputation," Leebron said.

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The focal reason behind Rice's rise in the rankings is credited to Times Higher Education's new weighting system for calculating universities' ranking scores. After 10 months of comprehensive consultation and research, Times Higher Education has compiled data provided by universities themselves and more than 13,000 verified academics to create rankings based on five categories.

The first category is "Citations," worth 32.5 percent of the overall score, which focuses on the university's research cited in academic papers. The next most influential category, valued at 30 percent, is titled "Teaching," and looks at student-staff ratios, undergraduate-postgraduate student mix, academic reputation for teaching quality and school income. "Research," also weighted at 30 percent in the rankings, focuses on the institution's research volume, income and reputation. Lastly, the magazine considered "International Mix," the ratio of international to domestic faculty and students, and "Income/Industry," which accounts for research income per academic staff member, for 5 percent and 2.5 percent of the overall ranking score, respectively.

The rankings' emphasis upon these categories helped Rice rise to its 47th place because the criteria were adjusted for size. This change was noteworthy because Rice is considered a small academic institution, with only 3,300 undergraduates and 2,300 postgraduates as of fall 2009.

"There are thousands of universities in the world, so the fact that Rice is in the company of the top 50 universities is a good sign. Still, we will strive to continue to better Rice as an institution overall for both students and staff. We will take note of the rankings, but not pay them too much attention," Leebron said.

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