Top 50 Engineering & Technology universities

13 October 2011

The engineering and technology table is, like it was last year, dominated by California. Three of the top five institutions in the rankings hail from the Golden State, home of the global high-tech hub Silicon Valley.

But the East Coast business powerhouse the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which boasts an $8 billion (£4.9 billion) endowment, remains a major player. It shares first place with last year's outright top dog, the California Institute of Technology.

The University of California, Berkeley occupies fourth place while Stanford University, whose alumni include William Hewlett, David Packard and other electronics tycoons, takes fifth. Four other members of the University of California - Los Angeles (eighth), Santa Barbara (joint 16th), San Diego (24th) and Davis (32nd) - are also highly placed. The results come despite the funding crisis facing the State of California: only time will tell whether the institution can maintain its competitiveness.

In total, 22 US institutions feature in the top 50.

The UK also scores highly in the table, with three of the top 10 and five representatives overall.

But the field of engineering and technology, covering everything from aerospace engineering to sustainable energy research, software design and robotics, is one of the most diverse of the subject tables in terms of national representation.

It is also the subject in which Asia makes its strongest showing in any discipline.

It has 10 institutions in the top 50 (compared with only six from mainland Europe), headed by the National University of Singapore (19th).

Engineering is the largest of the university's 14 faculties and has grown from just 300 students in the late 1970s to about 10,000 students today.

The University of Tokyo, in 21st place, has won several large grants under the Japanese government's 21st Century Centre of Excellence Programme, set up in 2002 to reward world-class research and help maintain global competitiveness.