The Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings were instituted in 2004 by the London-based Times Higher Education Magazine and Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, a transnational company specialising in education abroad. The purpose of the annual THE-QS league table of the world’s top 500 universities is “to provide a global comparison of their success against the national mission of remaining or becoming world class”.
The THE-QS World Universities Rankings 2008 assessed the top 500 universities worldwide on academic peer review (weightage 40 percent), employer review (10 percent), faculty-student ratio (20 percent), citations of faculty (20 percent), proportion of international faculty (5 percent), and proportion of international students (5 percent). On the basis of this assessment methodology the world’s top 10 universities of 2008 were:
Rank
1 Harvard University, United States
2 Yale University, United States
3 University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
4 University of Oxford, United Kingdom
5 California Institute of Technology, United States
6 Imperial College, London, United Kingdom
7 UCL (University College, London), United Kingdom
8 University of Chicago, United States
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
10 Columbia University, United States
Source: Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings 2008 (www.topuniversities.com)