Top Five Learning Centers in the World for 2012

Two months ago, this site wrote about the top five learning centres in the world for 2011, as listed by the QS World University Rankings. According to that ranking, University of Cambridge of the United Kingdom was the best university. The UK school was followed by Ivy League learning center Harvard University of the United States. At third is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the US. Rounding up the top five are Yale University (US) and University of Oxford (UK).

That was, however, the ranking for top universities in 2011. Have the rankings changed this year? Here are the top five of the 2012 World University Rankings list, as published by education and career network Quacquarelli Symonds.

• #5: Retaining its ranking is the UK-based University of Oxford. The learning center, which specializes in arts & humanities and social sciences & management, gained an overall score of 98.6.

• #4: At fourth is University College London (UK), after receiving an overall score of 98.7. Specializing in life sciences and medicine, UCL jump from seventh in 2011 rankings.

• #3: Sliding to third in 2012 is last year’s number two university, Harvard University. The Ivy League university scored 99.2 in this year’s rankings.

• #2: Another slide in the rankings was logged by the University of Cambridge, with an overall score of 99.8.

• #1: Last year’s third place is 2012’s best university in the world, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT, known as an excellent learning center for engineering courses, received an overall score of 100.

Making up the top ten of the 2012 QS World University Rankings are #6 Imperial College London (UK, 2011:6), #7 Yale University (US, 2011:4), #8 University of Chicago (US, 2011:8), #9 Princeton University (UK, 2011:13), and #10 California Institute of Technology (US, 2011:12).