UC Berkeley edged out Stanford to place fifth among the world’s top universities in the Times Higher Education magazine of Great Britain’s “World Reputation Rankings” released earlier this month.
In the reputation ranking, UC Berkeley earned a score of 72.4 on a 100-point scale, with Stanford trailing in sixth place with a score of 70.6. The Times article noted that to date, more than 20 Berkeley faculty members have become Nobel laureates.
In an analysis of the results, the Times noted that research has shown that a university’s reputation is the top priority (over location or even salary) for faculty changing jobs and is the number one consideration for internationally mobile students, above tuition fees and course content.
The Times rankings employs the world’s largest invitation-only academic opinion survey to provide a list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands. The 2013 rankings are based on 16,639 survey responses.