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Cal’s one-two punch By Ray Colvig Let’s say you are at a cocktail party and there is a lull in the conversation. You ask: “Have you heard that Cal is now the most esteemed university in the entire world?” Gasps. Heads snap up. “And not only that, Cal has been identified in a major study as the number two overall best university in the world!” “Come on,” challenge the head snappers. “Who says?” The sayer is the Times Higher Education Supplement, an influential weekly published in London. In its November 5 issue, the Times Higher, as it likes to call itself, featured a 15-page article called “World University Rankings.” (The report is available at www.thes.co.uk/ worldrankings.) Introducing the report, Times Higher editor John O’Leary writes: “Higher education has become so international that it is no longer enough for the leading universities to know that they are ahead of the pack in their own country. “[The Times Higher’s rankings] represent a first attempt to compare the world’s top universities in the round. The process has been kept simple, partly because so few indicators of quality in higher education translate reliably across borders, but also to avoid any suggestion that the data have been manipulated to produce a particular outcome. The five indicators have been chosen to reflect strength in teaching, research, and international reputation, with the greatest influence exerted by those in the best position to judge: the academics.” The top ten on the Times Higher’s list of the 200 best, with their composite scores, are: Harvard (1,000), UC Berkeley (880.2), MIT (788.9), CalTech (738.9), Oxford (731.8), Cambridge (725.4), Stanford (688.0), Yale (582.8), Princeton (557.5), and ETH Zurich (553.7). After that it is the London School of Economics, Tokyo University, the University of Chicago, Imperial College London, University of Texas at Austin, Australian National University, Beijing University, National University of Singapore, Columbia University, and UC San Francisco. A little farther down are UC San Diego and UCLA. A Times Higher writer credits “freedom from central government control” with helping U.S. institutions claim 11 of the top 20 slots in the global rankings. Profiling Berkeley, writer Jon Marcus quotes Clark Kerr: “If you are bored with Berkeley you are bored with life.” Marcus cites Cal’s vibrant social and academic environment: “Today, Berkeley is one of the few U.S. institutions that have balked at federal demands to bar foreign researchers from sensitive government-sponsored research. Its students, too, continue to protest--against tuition rises and the war in Iraq. Berkeley is consistently ranked as the top public university in the U.S., on a par with large private universities on the East Coast.” The Times Higher says that much effort went into worldwide sampling (conducted by an independent London firm) to learn how academics rate the excellence of top institutions. The results give Berkeley the number one ranking for “most esteemed university” in the world (with a peer review score of 665) followed by Harvard (643), Oxford (560), Cambridge (541), MIT (484), Stanford (420), Tokyo (371), 9Princeton (353), Yale (347), and Beijing (322). In the overall rankings, ten of the 200 “best universities” are in California and three from the top 20--Berkeley, Stanford, and UCSF--are located in the Bay Area. UC Santa Cruz (175th) and UC Davis (182nd) are also on the list. Southern California scores as a very strong region, too, with Cal Tech (4th), UC San Diego (24th), UCLA (26th), UC Santa Barbara (72nd), and USC (182nd). These facts should be shouted from the rooftops everywhere, as well as in the offices and chambers of Sacramento. The Times Higher says it plans to research and publish a “world’s best 200” on an annual basis, and it will be interesting to see how that develops. When U.S. News & World Report launched its annual “best colleges” issue in 1983, its rankings were based on opinions gathered from presidents and admissions officers. Stanford was number one, followed by Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Berkeley. Michigan and Illinois were close behind. Anguished complaints arrived from lower-ranked Ivies and other famous private schools, and U.S. News changed its criteria (emphasizing size of endowment, selectivity, and faculty/student ratios). Berkeley and the other publics dropped well down from the top and have stayed there ever since. The U.S. News ranking of “national universities” for 2004-5 has Berkeley in 21st place--but still the “nation’s best public,” of course. When the first American Council on Education report came out in 1966 proclaiming Berkeley to be America’s top research university--the “most distinguished” and “best balanced” in the nation--the Harvard Crimson headlined its story: “We’re Number Two, But We Try Harder.” Now, with the Times Higher Education Supplement reporting that the situation has, in one ranking, been reversed, there is just one thing for Berkeley to do: Try harder! Go Bears! Ray Colvig ’53 was Cal’s public information officer from 1964 to 1991. His latest book is Turning Points and Ironies: Issues and Events--Berkeley, 1959–67.
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