Penn State cited as one of the top universities worldwide

Penn State cited as one of the top universities worldwide

To view the rankings, click on the image above.

Penn State has been ranked as one of the top universities in the world, according to the new analysis announced from the Times Higher Education World Rankings. Penn State is ranked 51st in the world, joining schools from England, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Sweden, Australia, China, Hong Kong and Singapore at the top of the list.

"Our table of the top 200 represents approximately the top 1 percent of higher education institutions worldwide, so securing a place within it is an outstanding achievement," said Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education World University Rankings. "To do so, a university must score highly across our full range of indicators, and indeed Penn State performed consistently impressively throughout."

Also joining Penn State in the top tier worldwide are eight other Big Ten schools. California Institute of Technology this year took over the No. 1 spot on the list, formerly held by Harvard.

"The fact that so many big, state-supported research universities in the United States are high on this elite list shows that they are valued as models for the world's higher education system," said Bill Mahon, vice president for University Relations at Penn State.

The other Big Ten schools making the top 100 are University of Michigan, Northwestern, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, Michigan State and Purdue.

According to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings website, these rankings of the top universities across the globe employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer. These 13 elements are brought together into five headline categories, which are:

-- Teaching: the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
-- Research: volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
-- Citations: research influence (worth 30 per cent)
-- Industry income: innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
-- International outlook: staff and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

"On teaching, we have five separate indicators, collectively worth about a third of the overall ranking score. Times Higher Education’s rankings are the only world rankings that take a serious look at teaching," Baty said in a news release about the survey.

To view the rankings, visit http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/ online.