Commentary: California’s Amazing Worldwide Lead in Higher Education
In the Times of San Diego on August 18, 2015, Chris Jennewein’s opinion article addresses one area California is “unquestionably the world leader — higher education.” Here’s an excerpt:
In a widely followed ranking of world universities that emphasizes the sciences, six California institutions were ranked among the top 20. Stanford, Caltech, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego and UCSF all made the list.
The 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities was released Monday by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a public research university located in China. There are many other rankings, but this one is considered one of the most authoritative, especially for the sciences.
The U.S. leads the list overall, accounting for 16 of the 20. The United Kingdom boasts three, and New York and Massachusetts each count two. But California stands head and shoulders above the rest of the United States and the world with nearly a third of the top institutions.
How can this be? Three reasons come to mind: a history of public and private investment in higher education, an openness to immigrants and an innovation economy.
Read the article on the Times of San Diego’s website, and see the list of the 500 top-ranked universities.