Surprise, Surprise: Brits Think Their School Is Better Than Harvard
Harvard is no longer the world's best university, according to a British ranking system. Instead, Cambridge, in England, is the world's best university, according to these British people and their very British set of standards.
The new rankings of the alleged 200 best universities in the world come from QS—or should we say "UK-based QS." Their top ten "best" schools, in order of alleged bestness:
* Cambridge
* Harvard
* Yale
* University College London
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology
* Oxford
* Imperial College London
* Chicago
* California Institute of Technology
* Princeton
"My, I've never seen so many British schools in one place," we say in a noticeably sarcastic tone. So how did these British arbiters of all the world's education come up with these supposed rankings, which dropped Harvard (of America) down to second-class status? "The QS rankings are weighted 40% to academic reputation, 10% to employability, 20% to citations, 20% to the staff-student ratio and give a further 10% weighting to how international the make-up of the faculty and student body is."
Right, so you can't be the world's best university without an "international" faculty and student body. Sucks to be America, since all the world's smartest people were born right here in the USA. We actually have to dumb down our schools with international affirmative action in order to gain the acceptance of the Holy British, who weren't smart enough to beat us in the last war, if I recall correctly (and I do, I learned that in an American school).
