In today’s world, we rank everything from cars, cities and hotels to things such as phones and personal computer devices. These ratings help consumers make critical decisions about what to buy. On this same note, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) is responsible for ranking the top universities across the world. So the critical questions to be asked are: What are the top 10 universities in the world? How are these universities measured according to CWUR?

While trusted by students, academics, university administrators and government officials from around the world, the Center for World University Rankings provides consultation to governments and universities, as well as ranks universities worldwide. According to CWUR, the top 10 universities in the world for 2013 are Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Columbia, Berkeley, Princeton, Chicago and Yale. A complete listing of the top 100 universities can be found on CWUR’s website at cwur.org. It also includes a distribution of the top 100 universities among countries with the United States having the most institutions followed by England, Japan and France.

CWUR assessed the effectiveness of the top universities in the world based on seven key measures: (1) quality of faculty members, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes and medals; (2) publications, measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable international journals; (3) influence, measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly influential journals; (4) citations, measured by the number of highly-cited research papers; (5) patents, measured by the number of international patent filings; (6) alumni employment, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who currently hold CEO positions at the world’s top 2000 public companies relative to the university’s size and (7) quality of education, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university’s size.

With Harvard being named the top university in the world, some of its notable alumni includes presidents Barrack Obama, George W. Bush and Franklin D. Roosevelt; Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Chief Justice of the U.S., William Rehnquist. Harvard’s faculty members have received numerous Pulitzer Prizes for their outstanding contributions to American journalism, letters and music. Some of the recipients of the prizes are Caroline Elkins, Edward Wilson, Robert Coles, Walter Piston and Frederick Turner.

As we search for the quality of services from various organizations such as hotel chains and educational institutions, we commend CWUR for providing a methodology to assess the effectiveness of the top universities in the world. As such, other universities can benchmark best practices of these institutions for improvement and recognition of their stakeholders and their publications in reputable journals worldwide.

Dr. Ronald Holmes is the author of three books, “Education Questions to be Answered,” “Current Issues and Answers in Education” and “How to Eradicate Hazing.” He is publisher of “The Holmes Education Post,” an education focused Internet newspaper. Holmes is the national superintendent of education for the National Save the Family Now Movement, Inc., a former teacher, school administrator and district superintendent. He can be reached at [email protected].