Pitt Jumps from 20th to 10th Place in New National Science Foundation Rankings

PITTSBURGH—In just five years, the University of Pittsburgh has jumped from 20th to 10th place among the 100 colleges and universities receiving the largest amounts of federal support for science and engineering research and development, the National Science Foundation has reported in its latest annual rankings of these institutions of higher education based on comparative federal research and development support data from Fiscal Year 2002. The rankings, released earlier this month, show Pitt at 20th place in Fiscal Year 1997 and 10th place in Fiscal Year 2002.

The other institutions now in the ranking's top 10 are Johns Hopkins University, the University of Washington, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the University of California-Los Angeles, Stanford University, the University of California-San Diego, the University of California-San Francisco, and Washington University in St. Louis. Those institutions in the second tier of 10 in the rankings are Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke University, Harvard University, the University of Colorado, Yale University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the University of Minnesota, Pennsylvania State University, and Cornell University.

"In the vitally important area of research and development funding, the National Science Foundation's rankings represent a significant benchmark of our institutional progress," said Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg. "The most recently released rankings provide very good news—and are also a reflection of the talent, commitment, and ambition found at Pitt. Clearly, in our dramatic jump from 20th to 10th place, we have unquestionably demonstrated that the University of Pittsburgh is, indeed, continuing its climb up through the ranks of the nation's top research universities."

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6/25/04/tmw