OXFORD: #1 in "Times" Uni Rankings

Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson.

The (London) Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings rates Oxford in first place this year.

Oxford displaces CalTech, which has dominated the list in the last five years and before but is now is second place. The next three were Stanford, Cambridge and MIT.

THE Rankings are the only audited global inter-university comparisons. Audit of THE Rankings was by PwC. 

The ranking is based on the following factors, with their weights:

• teaching 30% (based on reputation, staff-student ratio etc.),
• research 30%,
• citations 30%,
• international outlook 7.5%,
• industry income 2.5%.

Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson, who has taken over since January 2016 as Oxford's CEO,  welcomed the news and said in a recent speech:

The ranking is even more impressive when one realises that we are far less wealthy than most of our global competitors. The endowment of the entire university–colleges and university together–is less than one-sixth of Harvard’s  [$38 billion in 2015] and a quarter of Stanford’s, Yale’s, and Princeton’s.

The rankings are dominated by U.S. universities, which account for 63 of the top 200. Asian universities improved their rankings, with 19 now in the top 200.

BIRTH: March 31 –Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow and her dog.

March 31, 2012 – Rachel Maddow's birthday will be tomorrow. She was born in 1973, in California's Castro Valley.

She was the first openly gay American to be chosen a Rhodes scholar. She resided in Lincoln College.

Today she is the first openly gay American news anchor, though my enjoyment of her show is not directly related to her sexual preferences.

She told the Stanford Daily as a 17-year-old freshman in 1990 that she was gay. They were supposed to hold publication until she got home to tell her Catholic parents first. 

Shock... 

The paper didn't keep its commitment, and her distressed parents had a clipping in their hands before she got home...

...But now she says her parents are supportive.

"The Rachel Maddow Show" on cable news channel MSNBC began in 2008 and was the network's most successful launch ever. The program airs at 9 pm Eastern, Monday-Friday and is rebroadcast at midnight. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula. Rachel Maddow's website sends you to Susan’s.

I've wanted to get her to speak to the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner but it's on Thursday evenings (the 2012 Boat Race Dinner in New York is April 12; it is completely sold out) and her show is on at the same time! In 2008 she told New York Magazine:

I do worry if being a pundit is a worthwhile thing to be. Yeah, I'm the unlikely cable news host. But before that, I was the unlikely Rhodes scholar. And before that, I was the unlikely kid who got into Stanford. And then I was the unlikely lifeguard. You can always cast yourself as unlikely when you're fundamentally alienated in your worldview. It's a healthy approach for a commentator. 

Her latest book is on how the United States gets into wars. It is called Drift. Get the Drift? Here is a link to her books.