WSJ/THE US College Rankings 2022: Johns Hopkins joins top 10

Browse the full results of the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings 2022

Johns Hopkins University has joined the top 10 of Times Higher Education’s student-focused US ranking for the first time.

The Baltimore institution ranks at joint ninth place in the Wall Street Journal/THE College Rankings 2022, on a par with Northwestern University. It swaps places with Cornell University, which drops two places to 11th.

Harvard University leads the table for the fifth consecutive year, while Stanford rises two places to second and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology drops one place to third.

Johns Hopkins’ rise is driven by slight improvements in its scores in three of the four pillars underpinning the ranking – resources, outcomes and environment – showing how tight the margins are at the top of the table.

Stanford’s increase is down to an improved score in the resources pillar, which includes metrics on finance per student, faculty per student and research papers per faculty.

Meanwhile, Emory University joins the top 20 for the first time since 2019, after rising four places to 20th. Its improvement was largely driven by a higher score in the outcomes pillar, which includes metrics on graduation rate, value added to graduate salary, debt after graduation and academic reputation.

The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor is the top public institution for the second year in a row, but it drops one place to 24th. This is part of a broader trend; none of the nine public universities that feature in the top 50 of the rankings this year and last year have improved during that time.

Unlike the THE World University Rankings, which focus on universities’ research performance, the US table, which is fuelled by data from THE, measures institutions’ student engagement, student outcomes and learning environments.

One new institution joins the US table this year: the United States Military Academy, which ranks at 47th.

WSJ/THE College Rankings 2022: top 10

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com