In its latest placement by pundits, Penn State fell to No. 58 in Thomson Reuters’ Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Last year, Penn State was ranked No. 49.

Widely considered the most thorough college ranking in the world, Times Higher Education takes into account 13 different categories, which are grouped into five areas:

• Teaching (30 percent of overall score), measuring the quality of a university’s learning environment.
• Research (30 percent of the overall score), measuring a university’s “reputation for research excellence,” as well as a university’s research income and volume of research output.
• Citations (30 percent of the overall score), measuring a university’s research influence by the number of times its published work is cited by scholars globally.
• Industry Income (2.5 percent of the overall score), measuring a university’s ability to bring to industry “innovations, inventions, and consultancy.”
• International Outlook (7.5 percent of the overall score), measuring a university’s campus diversity and the degree to which academics “collaborate with international colleagues on research projects.”

The list can be broken down by region or subject, showing Penn State as the 35th-best university in North America, as well as having the 43rd-best social sciences program, the 54th-best life sciences program, the 57th-best engineering and technology program, and the 62nd-best physical sciences program in the world. Penn State is also listed at No. 39 in Times Higher Education’s 2014 World Reputation Rankings.

Last year, the university scored a 64.2 in the ranking, dropping to a score of 62.9 this year. The university also recently dropped 11 spots in U.S. News and World Report’s annual college rankings, which uses a more subjective methodology.

Penn State finished sixth in the Big Ten, behind Michigan (17), Northwestern (21), Illinois (29), Wisconsin (29), and Minnesota (46) and finishing ahead of Ohio State (68), Pitt (91), and Rutgers (144).