University Is 32nd in U.S. News Global Rankings
Holds steady in assessment despite expanded pool
U.S. News upped its number of ranked global universities by a third this year, assessing 1,000 schools—BU still ranked 32nd. Photo by Dana J. Quigley
BU has come in 32nd in this year’s assessment of global universities by U.S. News & World Report. The University maintained the same standing earned in last year’s ranking despite the increased competition from a pool of universities that was expanded by one third.
The latest ranking, the third in this category from U.S. News & World Report, looked at 1,000 schools from 65 nations.
The University also earned high marks in several academic disciplines. Out of 200 programs assessed, BU ranked 38 in neuroscience and behavior, 43 in molecular biology and genetics, and 56 in immunology. Of 400 programs assessed, BU ranked 26 in physics and 63 in biology and biochemistry.
“BU’s stature among the world’s premier research institutions continues to be reaffirmed,” University Provost Jean Morrison says, “by both the pioneering work of our faculty and the recognition we receive through comparative evaluations like the U.S. News & World Report global rankings.” BU’s ranking, she adds, “is a reflection of the important, highly relevant practical discoveries being logged daily by our research community across both campuses. So, too, it is a reminder of how competitive an environment it remains among our peer group and how hard we must work in the years to come to continue building on this success.”
The U.S. News rankings of different sets of universities can be confusing. Its recent assessment of domestic universities and colleges put BU at 39, behind local schools such as Tufts (27), Boston College (31), and Brandeis (34). Yet in the global rankings, those schools placed far behind BU, with Tufts at 229, BC at 408, and Brandeis at 280.
The discrepancy is the result of different criteria employed by the different rankings.
“The global rankings emphasize graduate education, while the domestic ranking is a ranking of undergraduate programs,” says Melanie Madaio-O’Brien, BU’s assistant vice president for institutional research. “The global ranking puts much more emphasis on research, as measured by faculty scholarly productivity and research reputation.” The domestic ranking, by contrast, “places more weight on student quality and the University’s reputation among peer institutions and high school counselors,” she says.
“They measure completely different things. In its simplest sense, I tend to think of the domestic ranking as more focused on students and teaching, while the global rankings are more focused on faculty and research.”
The top five universities in this year’s global rankings are all in the United States: Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology. BU ranked just behind the University of British Columbia and tied for 32nd place with the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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