China's Tsinghua University has grabbed from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the title of being the world's top university in terms of engineering research, according to the 2015 Best Global Universities Rankings by U.S. and World Report.
Since 1983, the U.S. News has been ranking academic institutions in its region. It began publishing worldwide rankings in 2014, listing the top 750 universities from across the globe. Apart from posting overall rankings, it also enumerates by country and by region.
U.S. News uses the school's research influence by academic subjects as the benchmark for the ranking.
In the list, though Tsinghua University ranked 59th overall, it landed on the top spot in the field of engineering research. It was the number one in terms of publications, total citations, and in the number of publications listed in engineering's top 10 percent most-cited papers.
For Xu Haiyun, a Tsinghua alumnus and China Urban Construction Design and Research Institute's chief engineer, the success can be attributed to the rapid growth of China's infrastructure. He said the development has helped in fostering engineering technology's progress.
"Recent decades witnessed rapid growth of infrastructure construction on the Chinese mainland. We constructed the tallest buildings, bridges and railways in the world, and we educated the greatest number of engineering students, all of which requires advancement in engineering technology," Xu said.
The recent years have also seen the increase in employment competitiveness among students who majored in engineering fields such as software, automotive, network and communication engineering.
Meanwhile, the MIT ranked second overall, while another Chinese academic institution, Peking University, landed on the 41st spot.