are obviously problematic, but not when they make your own school look good. Here is a recent global survey, weighted toward schools whose graduates are in demand in the worldwide economy.
It was no surprise, I suppose, that the top 5 were, in order: Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, and Stanford. What came as a pleasant surprise was the No. 17 global ranking for the school where I teach, BOSTON UNIVERSITY.
In fact, if you go through this list just looking at U.S. schools, the schools rank this way:
Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Princeton, and then . . . B.U.!
That would make B.U. the seventh-best university in America (at least in the eyes of the “thousands of recruiters” who participated in this survey, which was “compiled by Emerging, a human resources consultancy based in Paris, and Trendence, an institute that researches employer branding, personal marketing and recruitment” — pardon me, but I think I am allergic to half the words in that description of those two outfits).
This all sounds very sketchy, but I have to admit that I like the results.
Prof Chris Daly's Blog 