Times Higher Education: Florida Tech Among Top 200 World Universities
2014 World University Rankings Laud School’s Research, International Outlook
MELBOURNE, FLA. — Florida Institute of Technology is once again among the top 200 universities in the world, according to the prestigious 2014-15 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.
Florida Tech is one of just three Florida universities in the top 200.
Excellence in research once again distinguished Florida Tech. In the citations category, one of five categories included in the rankings and the one Times Higher Education uses as its flagship “research influence indicator,” Florida Tech scored 99.2 out of a possible 100.
That score placed Florida Tech 6th in the world, tied with University of California Santa Barbara and ahead of Harvard University, Stanford University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Yale University and others. Florida Tech rose from 10th in last year’s rankings.
This citations indicator, according to THE, looks at the role of the universities in spreading new knowledge and ideas and as such is the single most influential of the 13 indicators. Data supplier Thomson Reuters examined more than 50 million citations to six million journal articles published from 2008-2012.
“This effectively illustrates how much a university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge,” THE said in explaining its methodology.
Florida Tech excelled in other facets of the rankings, as well.
The Melbourne, Fla.-based university was the only Florida school in THE’s ranking of the top 100 universities for physical sciences. Others on the list included Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech and Harvard in the United States, and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
Considered among the most comprehensive rankings in the world, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings are built using 13 performance indicators to examine a university’s strengths in five categories: teaching, research, citations, industry income and international outlook.
“Top-quality universities come in many different shapes and sizes, and there is no single model of excellence,” said Phil Baty, editor of the THE World University Rankings. “With this in mind, the THE World University Rankings are carefully designed to capture excellence in teaching and research against a university’s own mission and its own unique profile.”
Among the characteristics of the most successful universities, Baty found, are financial resources and a strong teaching environment.
He continued, “Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a world-class university must be genuinely international. It must be a magnet for the planet’s most talented staff and students, wherever they happen to come from; it must bring people together from a range of different cultures and backgrounds to tackle shared global challenges; and it must work and think across national borders.”
Florida Tech’s position in this critical “international outlook” portion of the Top 200 rankings put it ahead of other strong U.S. universities, including Princeton, Yale, University of California-Berkley and Johns Hopkins.
“Florida Tech has long understood the importance of being an international leader in research, of allowing our students, who hail from 112 countries, to experience unprecedented levels of hands-on research,” said university President and CEO Anthony J. Catanese. “Times Higher Education’s latest survey shows that we are succeeding in achieving these important standards, and it gives us further motivation to continue and improve on our status as one of the best universities in the world.”
The THE Top 200 rankings include universities from 28 countries. The U.S. has the most, with 73, followed by 29 U.K. institutions and 12 from Germany. University of Florida and University of Miami join Florida Tech as the only three Florida schools in the top 200.
Find the full rankings at www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/.
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