“This latest ranking is a testament to UC San Diego’s global impact and international reputation for having the highest academic standards,” said Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Suresh Subramani in a university statement. “It is an honor to have the quality of our excellent academic programs, research, faculty and students recognized.”
Times Higher Education utilized input from Thomson Reuters, a provider of information to businesses and professionals and Times’ source of rankings data. Times used this data to assess institutions of higher learning based on five criteria: teaching (defined as the learning environment), research (the volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), industry income (innovation) and international outlook (staff, students and research). Of these, teaching, research and citations bore the most weight at 30 percent each, followed by international outlook at 7.5 percent and industry income at 2.5 percent.
On their website, Times Higher Education commended UCSD on employing eight Nobel and three National Medal of Science laureates among instructional faculty, consisting of 1,183 individuals in the 2010-11 school year. They also mentioned that the computer language “UCSD Pascal” — which helped shape the popular programming language Java — was invented by UCSD faculty. UCSD researchers released “UCSD Pascal” in 1978 in order to fulfill the need for a common operating system that could run on many campus computers.
“This recognition is a testament to the quality of our students, staff and faculty, and the university’s spirit of innovation,” Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said in a prepared statement to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “It’s an honor to have UC San Diego’s contributions to education, research, service and patient care recognized globally.”
In addition to UCSD, four other UC campuses — Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis and Santa Barbara — also made the top 50 in the ranking. UC Berkeley ranked at 10th place while LA took 13th, and Santa Barbara and Davis claimed 35 and 38 respectively.
