China’s prestigious Tsinghua University has bested the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become the top school in the world for engineering research, according to a new U.S. News & World Report ranking, in a development that has renewed debate within China over the country’s educational system.

Tsinghua, which is often called “China’s MIT” and is renowned as one of the country’s top schools for studying sciences, came in first among 250 universities ranked by U.S. News in a report released this week, with Cambridge-based MIT ranking second.

Each school’s score is based on its number of publications and citations as well as its global and regional research reputation. U.S. News has released rankings of U.S. colleges for more than 30 years, but 2015 marks only the second year that it has scored universities across the globe.

In China, where school rankings are closely followed by the media and the public alike, some trumpeted Tsinghua’s victory as a sign that Chinese institutions of higher learning are gaining ground on their foreign counterparts, in a sign of Beijing’s growing global clout.

“Tsinghua’s progress is a microcosm of China’s rise,” one user wrote Thursday on China’s Weibo microblogs, while another exulted: “Not only Tsinghua alums but also all Chinese should be proud.”