The Times of London has just released its latest ranking of the top Universities in the World. The list is behind a paywall, but here are some fun data points.
* Harvard is #1, CalTech (?!) is #2
* The University of Massachusetts is ranked #56.
* The University of Cincinnati is ranked #190.
Why mention the University of Cincinnati? Just to point out that my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, is not even on the list. making it clearly worse than the University of Cincinnati. Though I think the Times just forgot to put UT-Austin on their giant dartboard.
Not to single out the Times. For years, UT-Austin was ranked #5 in Databases on the US News rankings, with exactly one faculty member doing database research. US News also currently has a separate ranking category for “Programming Language” (sic). Cornell is high on that list, but the two big guns in PL (Pingali & Morrisett) decamped years ago, and another failed to get tenure, so there’s only one PL faculty member left standing.
It now occurs to me that UWashington is also high on the list, and also had exactly one faculty member in PL…the trick, apparently, is to be the last guy standing.
But Mike Ernst has now joined UW, so obviously it will fall out of the rankings, and I’ve got my eyes on that spot.
Hey, Eliot and Yannis, sorry guys, but it’s either you or the rankings — I’m sure your families will understand…
Emery Blogger 
“A strong principle of the first year of our new ranking system is that only institutions that have actively signed up to the profiling process, and have provided and verified the data we need from them, are included.”
I guess this explains UT (and makes me proud).
Agreed on “last guy standing”. I’ll bring you some Greek delicacies–very tasty stuff. 🙂