Following the inaugural launch of the Best Global Universities rankings last year, U.S. News plans to release a second, expanded edition on usnews.com on Tuesday, Oct. 6. These rankings, which are geared toward the increasing number of students who are enrolling in universities outside of their own country, will show which universities are the best globally, as well as those that are highly ranked in certain countries and regions and are leaders in key academic subject areas.
The rankings focus specifically on schools’ academic research and reputation overall and not their separate undergraduate or graduate programs, allowing prospective students to accurately compare institutions around the world. The 2016 edition will also show how U.S. universities — which U.S. News has been ranking separately for more than 30 years — stand globally.
One notable change this year is that the overall Best Global Universities rankings will encompass the top 750 universities, up from the top 500 in the inaugural edition. These institutions are spread out across 57 countries, up from 49 countries last year. In addition, beyond the regional rankings showing the top universities in Europe, Asia, Australia/New Zealand and Latin America, U.S. News will add a new regional ranking.
New country-specific rankings will also be published. Last year, U.S. News highlighted the top schools in 11 countries with large numbers of ranked schools: Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This year, 21 additional country rankings will be published.
In the inaugural edition of the Best Global Universities rankings, U.S. News published the top 100 global universities in 21 subject areas, including key fields such as computer science, economics and business, and engineering. For the 2016 edition, U.S. News will add a new subject ranking, and will also increase the number of schools ranked in 13 of the subject areas.
To produce the global rankings, which are powered by Thomson Reuters InCitesTM research analytics solutions, U.S. News uses a methodology that focuses on factors that measure research performance. The ranking indicators for the overall rankings include those that measure a university’s global and regional reputation; academic research performance using bibliometric indicators such as citations and publications; and school-level data on faculty and Ph.D. graduates.
The subject-specific rankings — which are not of academic majors, departments or a specific school at a university like a business school or medical school — use a separate methodology, based on academic research performance in those subjects. U.S. News uses various bibliometric measures, including publications and citations, as well as indicators for global and regional reputation in that specific subject.
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2016 Best Global Universities Rankings Coming Oct. 6 originally appeared on usnews.com
