NEWSWEEK created a ranking of global universities that takes into account openness and diversity, as well as distinction in research. Their results show that the world's top ten includes eight American universities and two British universities. Their ranking is (1) Harvard University; (2) Stanford University; (3) Yale University; (4) California Institute of Technology; (5) University of California (Berkeley); (6) University of Cambridge (UK); (7) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); (8) Oxford University (UK); University of California, San Francisco; and, (10) Columbia University. Of the next 40 universities, 22 are American, five are British, five are Swiss, three are Canadian, two are Japanese, two are Australian and one is Singaporean. The rankings are based on weights assigned to criteria from the Shanghai Jiaotong Survey ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm. These include: number of highly cited researchers in life sciences, medicine, physical sciences, engineering and social sciences; number of articles published in Nature and Science over the previous five years; and, number of articles listed in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities indices. The rankings are also based on weights assigned to criteria from the Times Higher Education Survey, www.thes.co.uk. These include: percentage of international students; citations per faculty member; faculty/student ratio. Size of library holdings was also considered as a measure of scholarly resources. University funding as share of GDP according to OECD** shows USA on top with a 2.6%, followed by Denmark and Sweden with 1.9% and 1.8%, respectively. Netherlands comes next with 1.3% followed by Spain 1.2%. Each of France, Germany and UK spends 1.1% of GDP on higher education, while Italy comes last with 0.9%. ï Source: Newsweek, international issue August 21,2006/August 28, 2006 ïï OECD stands for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
