U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking


In 2014, U.S. News & World Report published its Best Global University Ranking without prior announcement, later clarifying that the rankings of that year were a trial balloon for the publication's entrance into the global university rankings field. After pre-announcing the rankings of next year, in 2016, the newspaper formalized the global university rankings as part of its regular annual programming. Having made official the ranking methodology, it disclosed that it is based on 10 different indicators that measure universities' academic performance and reputations. U.S. News & World Report's inaugural Best Global Universities ranking was launched on 28 October 2014, and it was based on data and metrics provided by Thomson Reuters, and are thus methodologically different from the criteria traditionally used by U.S. News to rank American institutions. Universities are judged on factors such as global research reputation, publications and number of highly cited papers. U.S. News also publishes region-specific and subject-specific global rankings based on this methodology.
Inside Higher Ed noted that the U.S. News is entering into the international college and university rankings area that is already "dominated by three major global university rankings": the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, and the QS World University Rankings. U.S. News's chief data strategist Robert Morse stated "We're well-known in the field for doing academic rankings so we thought it was a natural extension of the other rankings that we're doing."
Morse pointed out that the U.S. News as "the first American publisher to enter the global rankings space", given Times Higher Education and QS are both British, while the Academic Ranking of World universities is Chinese.
The Washington Post noted that some U.S. institutions rank higher on U.S. News's global ranking than on their domestic ranking, in particular Princeton, which was named top university in the U.S. in the 2014 domestic ranking was ranked behind nine other U.S. universities in the 2014 global ranking, which was topped by Harvard. This was attributed to the global ranking concentrating on "research prowess", while the "undergraduate experience", for which uniform international data is hard to obtain, was not included.