BEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD

Still at sea on the Seabourn Odyssey.  Also too, tomorrow.  But on Friday we arrive in Lahaina.  

Today, I stumbled across a ranking by Forbes, then subsequently found another that was different.  Not sure which is the latest, but I suspect this is a more recent Forbes ranking of the top 150 American Universities.  This was for 2022.

#1      MIT

#2      Stanford and Cal Berkeley

#4      Princeton

#5      Columbia

#6      UCLA

#7      Williams College

#8      Yale

#9      Duke

#10    Pennsylvania

#15    Harvard

#20    Chicago

#50    Wake Forest

#100  Loyala Marymount

#150  Oregon

Yikes, Harvard at #15???

Not sure how up to date that was, but I also stumbled across what appears to be another Forbes' 2022 ranking of American universities.  According to that article:

Methodology

We ranked colleges and universities in the U.S. based on the return on investment and outcomes they delivered for their students. Schools placed well if their students graduated on time, secured high salaries and low debt, and went on to have successful careers. We added several new measures and datasets this year to make our findings even more robust. We reframed data to better gauge alumni salaries, added a new metric to determine how quickly graduates paid off the cost of college, and accounted for how well schools were serving low-income students. Our new ranking better accounts for which schools are serving as true engines of the American Dream.

1. University of California, Berkeley

State: CA
Type: Public
Av. Grant Aid: $19,126
Av. Debt: $6,000
Av. Early Career Salary: $138,800

One of the top public universities in the country, UC Berkeley has a rich tradition of leading technological and social change. Berkeley’s faculty has had a hand in the discovery of Vitamins E and K, the development of the atomic bomb and the creation of the flu vaccine.

#2  Yale

#3  Princeton

#4  Stanford

#5  Columbia

#6  MIT

#7  Harvard

Harvard at #7?   Better than the other one, but #7 seems awfully low.  I guess Forbes is business oriented, so that might explain the above lists.  What's going on?  Read this from the first ranking:

Forbes’ top colleges ranking spotlights schools that offer an excellent education at a great price, graduate high-earners and propel students to become successful entrepreneurs and influential leaders in their fields. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology—ranked number one for the first time this year—accomplishes all of this and more. California-based colleges led by UC Berkeley continue to excel, filling six of the top 25 spots, and private colleges such as Duke University, Rice University and Williams College have made laudable gains. Meanwhile, Ivy League institutions Harvard University and Yale University dropped several spots this year. See here for an explanation of our rankings methodology, herefor a closer look at the Ivy League’s lower scores, and here for a piece about America’s federal military academies, which Forbes spun out of the top colleges list.

I'll further check on why we have two Forbes 2022 university rankings.  I suspect one is for 2023, or 2021.  Mind you, there are several other surveys, and that was the first time I saw anything from Forbes.  Having come this far, might as well conduct my every few years re-look at this subject.  For example, the more traditional one is by U.S. News and World Report.  They have annually been doing this for 40 years, and here is their ranking for 2022-2023:

• #1      Princeton
• #2      MIT
• #3      Harvard, Stanford, Yale
• #6      Chicago
• #7      Johns Hopkins
• #8      Pennsylvania
• #9      California Institute of Technology
• #10    Duke
• #20    California at Berkeley
• #21    UCLA

There are more, and here is one that was released only this week by QS for 2023.  Well, Harvard is back at #3.

• #1      MIT
• #2      Stanford 
• #3      Harvard
• #4      Cal Tech
• #5      Chicago
• #6      Pennsylvania
• #7      Princeton
• #8      Yale
• #9      Cornell
• #10    Columbia
• #20    Brown
• #50    Yeshiva

So you ask, what is the QS system?

• Quacquarelli Symonds is in the UK.
• Their survey is approved by the International Ranking Expert Group.  So who are they?
• An international nonprofit organization created in 2009. 
• Secretariat based in Warsaw, Poland.
• Collaborative initiative between UNESCO European Centre for Higher Education and a broad variety of ranking experts from international organizations.
• U.S. News and World Report is a member.
• According to Alexa Internet, it is the most widely viewed university ranking worldwide.

Finally, here is QS World University Rankings of 1500 world institutions for 2023:

• #1      MIT
• #2      Cambridge
• #3      Stanford
• #4      Oxford
• #5      Harvard
• #6      CalTech
• #6      Imperial College London
• #10    Chicago
• #12    Peking
• #14    Tsinghua (Beijing)
• #15    Edinburgh
• #16    Princeton
• #18    Yale
• #19    Nanyang (Singapore)
• #20    Cornell
• #21    Hong Kong
• #22    Columbia
• #23    Tokyo
• #27    Cal Berkeley
• #29    Seoul National
• #30    Australian National
• #33    Melbourne
• #36    Kyoto
• #42    KAIST (S. Korea)
• #42    Zhejiang (China)
• #44    UCLA
• #50    Duke
• #72    Texas
• #77    National Taiwan

Three of the top six are from the UK.  Well, the organization is pro-Europe.  Harvard drops to #5.  QS has rankings on just about anything academic you might want.  For example, here are their Best Engineering and Technology Universities:

• #1      MIT
• #2      Stanford
• #3      Cambridge
• #4      Oxford
• #5      California Berkeley
• #6      Imperial College London
• #7      ETH Zurich
• #8      Harvard
• #9      Tsinghua (Beijing)
• #10    CalTech

Top three in Medicine:

• #1      Harvard
• #2      Oxford
• #3      Stanford

QS Asia university ranking for 2023.

• 
  #1      Peking (China)
• #2      National University of Singapore
• #3      Tsinghua (Beijing)
• #4      The University of Hong Kong
• #5      Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
• #6      Fudan (Shanghai)
• #7      Zhejiang (Hangzhou)
• #8      KAIST (Daejeon)
• #9      Malaya
• #10    Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• #11    Tokyo

Others.

• University of Chile is Latin America's highest engineering institution.
• University of Toronto boasts the most top-50 subjects in the world with 48.
• There is almost an infinite number of these details.

QS summary:

• 13th edition.
• 54 academic disciplines.
• Analysis of 1594 universities in 93 countries.
• Survey of 151,000 academics and 99,000 employers.
• In 2022, these rankings were consulted over 120 million times and referenced 117,000 times.
• ETH Zurich is the top university in continental Europe.
• In the Orient, China is #1, India #2 and Japan #3.  Japan is declining, with 43% of its university falling down the table and 8% improving.  Why is Japan declining?

And the cruise continues.  First a Mexican lunch.

Dinner was Italian in The Colonnade.

Salad and Tuscany Bean Soup.

One of the best Osso Bucos ever.

 A lot of marrow.

Gorgonzola cheese and Port.

The on to....

The two best dancers are Sergei and Violetta.  Of course, they'd better be because they are the two featured dancers on the ship.

There are two headliners, The Trio, below, and Nikki and her band.

Note way in the background our pod.  This what it looks like from the pod site.

We can go there anytime, even after the program has started.  For some reason, no one has "found" this perfect location, where you can almost go to sleep if you want.  This could well be my favorite spot on the ship.  Nikki and her band.

A lot of dancing.

A decent walk day with 3514 steps.  I really had planned to shoot for 10,000 every day, and got there, I think, once.

Tomorrow, one of the cruise highlights, the Galley Lunch, where you walk into the kitchen to pick up your food.

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