The Times Higher Education magazine released the inaugural Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 list, which ranks the world's 100 best universities that are under the age of 50 years. The survey ranks universities on reputation alone using the largest international survey of academic opinion.

Thirty countries and regions are represented in the world's top 100 Under 50 ranking and six countries and regions are represented in the top ten, including South Korea, Switzerland, Hong Kong, the U.S., France and the U.K.

The rankings of the top univresities across the globe employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer. The 13 elements are brought about into five headline categories, which are:

  • Teaching-the learning environment (worth 30 percent of the overall ranking score)
  • Research-volume, incoming and reputation (worth 30 percent)
  • Citations-research influence (worth 30 percent)
  • Industry-innovation (worth 2.5 percent)
  • International outlook-staff, students and research (worth 7.5 percent).

Here is a link to the World University Rankings 2011-2012.