Times Higher Education Has Academics Rank Universities' Reputations. (March 11, 2011)

Times Higher Education must reckon it's on to a good thing in ranking the world's universities. This week they released their survey of the 13,338 respondents of the world's academics who were asked to nominate up to 10 institutions they considered to be "the best" in the respondent's field of expertise. The respondants had on average been employed in a higher education institution for over 16 years and had published over 50 research papers. THE did not indicate what percentage of the academics contacted had responded.

THE's compilation then combined scores for research and teaching at a ratio of 2:1, research:teaching.

The geographical distribution of the respondents is shown in the graphic below. Whether or not a possible geographical bias was allowed for in the scoring is not discussed in the eight page article published in THE's March 10^th issue.

The following table lists the ranking of the top 100 universities. With respect to the top 50 the scores relative to those for Harvard University are shown for "Research reputation", "Teaching reputation, and "Overall reputation. The table does not list individual rankings in the group from 51-100, but rather lists them alphabetically in blocks of 10 without noting the scores.

The four Australian universities that are listed: The University of Melbourne is in equal 45^th place while The Australian National University and The University of Sydney are listed between 51-60; the University of Queensland is listed between 81-90.

A more graphical representation of the table can be found at:  http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/reputation-rankings.html