A study of colleges around the world, released Thursday, pegs the University of Texas at Austin as one of the best schools in the nation, standing head and shoulders — and torso and hips and even kneecaps — above its biggest sports rivals, Oklahoma University and Texas A&M.
The Center for World University Ratings (CWUR) says that UT Austin is the #22 university in the nation and #29 in the world. Not too shabby, considering that A&M came in at #56 in the nation and #105 in the world. Oklahoma did not fare so well, scoring #96 nationally and #295 globally. And UT Austin’s much more expensive, wannabe-Ivy cousin, Southern Methodist University (aka, where the rich Dallas kids go to school), came in at #74 nationally and #171 globally.
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So, maybe money isn’t everything after all. Bragging rights, on the other hand, are eternal.
“This world ranking reflects the outstanding work our faculty does, reflects who we have here as students, and reflects our concerted effort here in Austin to make UT the best university in the world,” Gary Susswein, UT Austin’s media relations director, told Austin.com “We are proud of where we are. We obviously strive to be the best, so we were very pleased by the ranking, but we are not surprised.”
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In creating their list of the world’s top 1,000 colleges, CWUR considered a diverse array of criteria like academic performance, alumni employment, patents held by alumni and faculty, quality of faculty, number of research papers published and citations in research papers from other universities.
Topping out the list, both for the U.S. and the globe, were the usual suspects: Harvard at #1, Stanford at #2 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at #3. And while UT Austin’s placement is still extraordinarily high on the 2014 list, it did slip from #26th in the world for 2013 to #29th this year.
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Featured photo: Flickr user Thomas Duesing, creative commons licensed.
(H/T: Austin Culturemap)
