The Times Higher Education Supplement once again included Duke among the top universities in the world, placing the University 13th in its annual global rankings released last week.
"It's always nice to have these surveys and rankings sort of confirm what we know about the quality of our faculty and students," said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations.
Duke fell from its spot in last year's rankings, when it was placed 11th in the world.
The change was less dramatic than last year's, however, when the University rose 41 spots from 2004 to 2005.
Despite its slight drop, Duke garnered attention for ranking first in the world in the "Faculty/Student" category, with a perfect score of 100.
"The measure of staff-to-student ratio is intended to determine how much attention a student can hope to get at a specific institution, by seeing how well stocked it is with academic brainpower relative to the size of its student body," said a statement on the THES website. "This is captured by asking universities how many staff and students they have, and dividing one by the other."
Although Burness said he was pleased with Duke's score, he said he was surprised by its No.-1 ranking, citing the existence of other schools with better faculty/student ratios.
"I think every ranking I've seen has a methodological issue that I don't think people should take what they see at face value," Burness said.
In addition to using the Faculty/Student score, universities were ranked using a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, including peer review, recruiter review, an international faculty score, an international students score and research quality, THES officials said.
Harvard University once again held the top spot in the rankings, but this year two British institutions-Cambridge University and Oxford University-rose to second and third place, respectively.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology-which formerly ranked second-dropped to a fourth-place tie with Yale University.
Like many of Duke's scores in individual categories, the University's peer review score remained relatively consistent, but still markedly lower than that of similar institutions.
By comparison, Beijing University-which ranked one place below Duke overall-scored more than 30 points higher in peer review.
The University of Chicago (11th), Columbia University (12th) and Cornell University (15th) all scored significantly higher than Duke in peer review.
Still, at 39 out of 100, Duke's score showed an improvement from last year, when it received 36 for its peer review score. Peer review is the largest segment of the rankings-accounting for 40 percent of each school's total score-and Duke's low score weakened the impact of other positive scores.
Duke remained relatively consistent in other categories as well, including recruiter review, which was added in 2005. The score uses data compiled from several hundred companies worldwide, asking them to rank universities on a basis of their preference of each university's graduates.
The score has proved to be a benefit for Duke in the rankings; with a score of 78, Duke ranked above many other top-15 schools, including Princeton University, Oxford and Columbia.
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