World rankings: Top 10 universities in 2014

Britain’s higher-education consulting firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) released its annual global ranking of universities for 2014. Here are the top 10 schools: 

#5 (tie): University College London

Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters/File
Graduate student Katie Bates works in the Nanomedicine Lab at UCL's School of Pharmacy in London

The second-highest ranking of London’s powerhouse universities, UCL’s global reputation comes in part from its staggering diversity. Nearly 40 percent of the student body is foreign, with some 150 countries represented, and UCL counts among its graduates the first presidents of Kenya and Mauritius, as well as the Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi. The university also boasts the highest number of female professors of any institution in the UK.

5 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.