Harvard Falls Short, Again

It's been a tough year for Harvard rankings. After tying with Princeton in this past year's most recent U.S. News and World Report, Harvard recently clocked in second in another ranking.

Despite its budding Innovation Lab, the University trailed Stanford in the amount of venture capital funding secured by alums, according to a study by CB Insights.

The study looked at funding raised by alumni of Harvard, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.C. Berkeley, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania over the past five years.

Because it defined "alumni" as those who graduated or dropped out from one of these universities, Facebook gave Harvard's numbers a huge boost.

Including Facebook, Harvard's total venture capital funding is $3.8 billion, a close second to Stanford's $4.1 billion.

Without Mark E. Zuckerberg's brainchild, Harvard's total drops down to $1.8 billion, still greater than the other four university's totals, which fall between $1 and $1.3 billion.

Even without Zuckerberg, Harvard is catching up. According to the study, although Harvard's collective pool of capital is smaller than that of Stanford's, the amount of deals that Harvard alumni are making is growing at a faster rate.

And given its location next to Silicon Valley, it's really no surprise that Stanford has the startup bug.

But, with the rise of the I-Lab and these current upward trends in raising capital, we'll see if Harvard can't just beat Stanford at their own game.