Caltech: The Secret of the World's Number One University

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016 has once again named the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as the world's top research institution. This marks the 5th consecutive year Caltech has held the top spot.

Below is a summary of Times Higher Education's analysis of the factors behind Caltech's success.

If someone wanted to briefly tell the story of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) using numbers, it would be hard to know where to start.

Caltech is 124 years old, boasting 57 recipients of the U.S National Medal of Science and 32 Nobel Prize-winning faculty and alumni (5 of whom still work at the school).

In short, for such a small institution, Caltech's achievements are extraordinary.

Ares Rosakis, head of Caltech's Engineering and Applied Science division, describes the school as "a special case among universities... a very interesting phenomenon." "Very interesting" may be an understatement. 

Caltech's modest campus sits quietly in a peaceful Pasadena neighborhood, shaded by the San Gabriel mountains.

Through only about 15 miles from Hollywood, it seems like a completely different world.

Caltech could be considered a galaxy with its own stars. Its long list of renowed former faculty includes Charles Richter - inventor of the earthquake magnitude scale, Theodore von Kármán - first director of NASA's famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He trained the pioneering "rocket boys" who were mocked in the 1930s for bringing space rockets from science fiction into reality. Other big names on this extensive list include Mike Brown - the man who "killed Pluto" (when his research demoted it to dwarf planet status). There's also John Schwarz - co-winner of the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in December 2013. 

Clearly Caltech is a special place, but how it achieved such greatness? Rosakis's first answer emphasizes Caltech's size. 

"I always refer to this school's small size as similar to the size effect in materials - there are special properties that exist when you're extremely small," he explains, sitting in his airy office as sunlight streams through the window onto a blackboard covered in math equations. 

Along with the school's 300 professors are about 600 research scholars, 1,204 graduate students and 977 undergraduates. The 2017 class at this private "non-profit" university has only about 249 students.

While small size is a disadvantage for some institutions, for Caltech it's key to its existence, and perhaps the most important factor in its brilliant success.

"It means Caltech has to be good at combining disciplines - whether we like it or not," Rosakis notes.

"I have 77 faculty in engineering and applied science. MIT has 490 faculty. How can I compete with an excellent place like MIT? We have to require our engineers to interact with all science fields... - it's a matter of survival. We're not big enough to do everything big unless engineers work together."

Another crucial factor in Caltech's success - also related to its modest size - is its extremely selective hiring strategy, says Steve Mayo, head of the Biology and Bioengineering division.

"We don't hire many faculty each year. In many cases, searching for faculty in a particular field can take us several years to find the right person."

"We're very careful in hiring faculty, and we're fully committed to their success when they work here."

Rosakis is even more direct on this issue: "I can't make mistakes in hiring, I really can't. We have 16 faculty in Computer Science and Technology, while Carnegie Mellon (a highly ranked research university in Pittsburgh) has 200. If I choose one or two wrong people, I'll fail big time." 

If you asked me what's more important: receiving a $100 million budget or hiring 10 top-notch professors, I'd instantly choose the 10 professors.

Our main goal in achieving excellence is to attract the most talented individuals here. If we have the best people, $100 million will follow, because they'll win grants, convince donors to fund Caltech, and bring prestige to the entire institution. 

This means decision-makers at Caltech spend a lot of time finding the right people and offering incentives to attract them, Rosakis explains.

"We view recruitment as our top priority. We hire them and give them everything they need to succeed. Other places might hire 3-4 people for the same position and let them compete. We believe we've made the right choice", and we also give them enough 'gold' so they can't say they failed due to lack of funding."

The factors behind Caltech's brilliant success seem quite simple: small size, interdisciplinary collaboration, selective hiring, and maintaining a flexible management system. 

However, can other educational institutions around the world copy and replicate this model?

"I don't think we have any secrets," say Mayo. "Caltech's culture has evolved over many decades. If you want to establish something new and hire hundreds of faculty to put them in the same school, it would be very difficult to find 300 outstanding faculty to work in that new environment."

Fiona Harrison, chair of Caltech's faculty search committee, agrees with this view. "I feel that Caltech's culture is something you only realize after you're been here for a while. I know many people who left Caltech for Harvard or MIT but eventually came back, because there are cultural differences," she says.

"You can go straight to the department director's office and say 'I have this great idea' or 'I want to switch to the field and here are the reasons," and usually your viewpoint is supported."

In fact, student exams at Caltech are usually done at home, never supervised - a symbol of teaching environment based entirely on trust.

Caltech's Honor Code is brief and simple: "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community."

Markus Meister, a biology professor at Caltech, is also an alumnus from 30 years ago. He remembers how much he and his friends were trusted.

"I did many take-home exams - very challenging to complete in 3 hours and often you couldn't finish, and you'd draw a line on the paper and write 'this is what I did in 3 hours', then you'd continue. Professors might only grade the parts you did in 3 hours," he recalls.

Caltech also prides itself on having a friendly teaching environment - the student-faculty ratio is 3-1. Undergraduate students (including freshmen) often work in the school's labs during summer under scholarship programs.

Professor Meister believes cheating can't exist in a small-group teaching environment with close collaboration between colleagues, because they would quickly discover it.

As this school believes: "The Honor Code empowers freedom to choose responsible actions. Caltech students value this freedom and fiercely protect it - that's also why this system truly works well."