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California Institute of Technology has been ranked the world's best university for 2011-2012 in a list published in the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine in early October. It is the first time that CIT has outranked Harvard University on the list, as the latter slipped to joint-second with Stanford after having topped the list since 2004.

In order to capture the full range of university activities across the globe, the rankings employ 13 separate performance indicators which are grouped into five headline categories: teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 percent of the overall ranking score), research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 percent), citations — research influence (worth 30 percent), industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 percent) and international outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 percent).

Apart from an overall ranking of the world's top 400 universities, the magazine also lists the best universities by region and subject.

? Full list: Top 400 universities in the world 2011-12

? Top universities by region: Europe, Asia

The following are the Times Higher Education magazine's top North American universities for 2011-12:

Rank	World Rank	Institution	Country / Region	Overall Score
1	1	California Institute of Technology	United States	94.8
2	2	Harvard University	United States	93.9
3	2	Stanford University	United States	93.9
4	5	Princeton University	United States	92.9
5	7	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States	92.3
6	9	University of Chicago	United States	90.2
7	10	University of California, Berkeley	United States	89.8
8	11	Yale University	United States	89.1
9	12	Columbia University	United States	87.5
10	13	University of California, Los Angeles	United States	87.3
11	14	Johns Hopkins University	United States	85.8
12	16	University of Pennsylvania	United States	84.9
13	18	University of Michigan	United States	82.8
14	19	University of Toronto	Canada	81.6
15	20	Cornell University	United States	80.5
16	21	Carnegie Mellon University	United States	78.4
17	22	University of British Columbia	Canada	77.4
18	22	Duke University	United States	77.4
19	24	Georgia Institute of Technology	United States	77
20	25	University of Washington	United States	76.5
21	26	Northwestern University	United States	76.2
22	27	University of Wisconsin-Madison	United States	75.8
23	28	McGill University	Canada	75.5
24	29	University of Texas at Austin	United States	74.9
25	31	University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign	United States	74.2
26	33	University of California, San Diego	United States	73
27	35	University of California, Santa Barbara	United States	72.1
28	38	University of California, Davis	United States	71.2
29	41	Washington University in St Louis	United States	70.5
30	42	University of Minnesota	United States	70
31	43	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	United States	69.3
32	44	New York University	United States	69
33	49	Brown University	United States	65.6
34	51	Pennsylvania State University	United States	64.9
35	54	Boston University	United States	64.2
36	55	University of Southern California	United States	64
37	57	Ohio State University	United States	63
38	59	University of Pittsburgh	United States	62
39	64	University of Massachusetts	United States	61.1
40	65	McMaster University	Canada	61
41	70	Vanderbilt University	United States	59.6
42	72	Rice University	United States	59
43	75	Emory University	United States	57.4
44	77	University of Colorado Boulder	United States	57.3
45	77	Tufts University	United States	57.3
46	81	University of Rochester	United States	56.8
47	81	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey	United States	56.8
48	86	University of California, Irvine	United States	55.4
49	89	University of Notre Dame	United States	55
50	90	Dartmouth College	United States	54.9