Academic Ranking of World Universities

The Academic Ranking of World Universities is compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.^[1] The ranking compared 1200 higher education institutions worldwide according to a formula that took into account alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10 percent), staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20 percent), highly-cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20 percent), articles published in Nature and Science (20 percent), the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index (20 percent) and the per capita academic performance (on the indicators above) of an institution (10 percent). The methodology is set out in an academic article by its originators, N.C. Liu and Y. Cheng^[2]. Liu and Cheng explain that the original purpose of doing the ranking was “to find out the gap between Chinese universities and world-class universities, particularly in terms of academic or research performance.”^[3] The rankings have been conducted since 2003 and then updated annually.

Commentary

As the first multi-indicator ranking of global universities, ARWU has attracted a great deal of attention from universities, governments and public media worldwide since its publication. A survey on higher education published by The Economist in 2005 commented ARWU as “the most widely used annual ranking of the world’s research universities.”^[4] Bollag (2006) wrote on Chronicle of Higher Education that ARWU “is considered the most influential international ranking.”^[5]

One of the factors in the significant influence of ARWU is that its methodology looks globally sound and transparent. EU Research Headlines reported the ARWU’s work on 31st Dec 2003: “The universities were carefully evaluated using several indicators of research performance.”^[6] Chancellor of Oxford University, Prof. Chris Patten, said “the methodology looks fairly solid ... it looks like a pretty good stab at a fair comparison.” Vice-Chancellor of Australian National University, Prof. Ian Chubb, said “The SJTU rankings were reported quickly and widely around the world… (and they) offer an important comparative view of research performance and reputation.” Margison (2007) also commented the ARWU ranking that one of the strengths of “the academically rigorous and globally inclusive Jiao Tong approach” is “constantly tuning its rankings and invites open collaboration in that.”^[7]

The ARWU ranking and its content have been widely cited and applied as a starting point for identifying national strengths and weaknesses as well as facilitating reform and setting new initiatives. Bill Destler (2008), the president of the Rochester Institute of Technology, draw reference to the ARWU ranking to analyze the comparative advantages the Western Europe and US have in terms of intellectual talent and creativity in his publication in the journal Nature.^[8] European commissioner of Education, Jan Figel, pointed out in an interview in 2007 that “if you look at the Shanghai index, we are the strongest continent in terms of numbers and potential but we are also shifting into a secondary position in terms of quality and attractiveness. If we don't act we will see an uptake or overtake by Chinese or Indian universities.”^[9] Also, Enserink (2007) referred to ARWU and argued in his paper published in Science that “France’s poor showing in the Shanghai ranking ... helped trigger a national debate about higher education that resulted in a new law... giving universities more freedom.”^[10] The world leading think tank organisation, Rand Corporation, also used the ARWU ranking as evidence in their consultancy paper to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.^[11]

Criticism

College and university rankings often stimulate controversy (see Criticism of college and university rankings (North America) and Criticism of college and university rankings (2007 United States)) and the ARWU is no exception. A 2007 paper published in the journal Scientometrics found that the results from the Shanghai rankings could not be reproduced from raw data using the method described by Liu and Cheng.^[12]

In a report from April 2009, J-C. Billaut, D. Bouyssou and Ph. Vincke analyze how the ARWU works, using their insights as specialists of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). Their main conclusions are that the criteria that are used are not relevant, that the aggregation methodology is plagued by a number of major problems and that the whole exercise suffers from an insufficient attention paid to fundamental structuring issues ^[13].

The ARWU researchers themselves, N.C Liu and Y Cheng^[3], think that the quality of universities cannot be precisely measured by mere numbers and any ranking can be controversial. They suggest that university and college rankings should be used with cautions and their methodologies must be read carefully before reporting or using the results.

Rankings

2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009

The table below contains the rankings from 2003 to 2009 for all universities which ranked at least 100 in one of the years.^[1] The ranking is omitted for years in which the school did not land within the top 100. Note, the full ranking contains over 500 universities. If a university is not listed in this table, it fell below 100 in all seven years.

University	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Aarhus University	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	93	97
Arizona State University	1000	1000	1000	100	96	93	94
Australian National University	49	53	53	54	57	59	59
Boston University	98	86	86	81	83	83	74
Brown University	49	82	82	85	70	71	69
California Institute of Technology	3	6	6	6	6	6	6
Carnegie Mellon University	61	62	62	56	60	62	59
Case Western Reserve University	51	65	65	70	78	83	87
Columbia University	10	9	9	7	7	7	7
Cornell University	12	12	12	12	12	12	12
Duke University	32	31	31	31	32	32	31
École Normale Supérieure - Paris	1000	85	85	99	83	73	70
Emory University	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	100
Free University of Berlin	95	1000	1000	99	83	1000	1000
Harvard University	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Hebrew University of Jerusalem	94	90	90	60	64	65	64
Humboldt University of Berlin	1000	95	95	1000	1000	1000	1000
Imperial College London	17	23	23	23	23	27	26
Indiana University - Bloomington	1000	1000	1000	97	90	92	93
Johns Hopkins University	24	22	22	20	19	20	19
Karolinska Institutet	39	46	46	48	53	51	50
King's College London	75	77	77	83	83	81	65
Kyoto University	30	21	21	22	22	23	24
Lund University	93	92	92	90	97	97	1000
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	6	5	5	5	5	5	5
McGill University	79	61	61	62	63	60	65
McMaster University	86	88	88	90	87	89	91
Michigan State University	87	80	80	80	80	83	86
Moscow State University	1000	66	66	70	76	70	77
Nagoya University	68	97	97	98	94	1000	82
New York University	55	32	32	29	30	31	32
North Carolina State University	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Northwestern University	29	30	30	33	29	30	30
Ohio State University	81	73	73	66	61	62	62
Osaka University	53	54	54	61	67	68	71
Pennsylvania State University	40	43	43	42	43	42	45
Princeton University	7	7	7	8	8	8	8
Purdue University	80	71	71	73	68	65	65
Rice University	61	75	75	87	87	97	99
Rockefeller University	28	29	29	30	30	32	32
Rutgers University	38	44	44	46	47	54	55
Stanford University	2	2	2	3	2	2	2
Stockholm University	1000	97	97	84	86	86	88
ETH Zurich	25	27	27	27	27	24	23
Technical University of Munich	60	45	45	54	56	57	57
Texas A&M University	70	1000	1000	88	91	88	88
Tohoku University	64	69	69	76	76	79	84
Tokyo Institute of Technology	1000	1000	1000	89	99	1000	1000
Tokyo University	19	14	14	19	20	19	20
Tufts University	83	99	99	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Arizona	55	76	76	76	74	77	77
University of Basel	96	91	91	81	82	87	85
University of Birmingham	1000	93	93	90	92	91	94
University of Bonn	1000	99	99	1000	99	97	98
University of Bristol	55	60	60	62	62	61	61
University of British Columbia	35	36	36	36	36	35	36
University of California, Berkeley	4	4	4	4	3	3	3
University of California, Davis	36	42	42	42	43	48	49
University of California, Irvine	44	55	55	44	45	46	46
University of California, Los Angeles	15	16	16	14	13	13	13
University of California, Riverside	88	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of California, San Diego	14	13	13	13	14	14	14
University of California, San Francisco	13	17	17	18	18	18	18
University of California, Santa Barbara	26	35	35	35	35	36	35
University of Cambridge	5	3	3	2	4	4	4
University of Chicago	11	10	10	8	9	9	9
University College London	20	25	25	26	25	22	21
University of Colorado	31	34	34	34	34	34	34
University of Copenhagen	65	59	59	56	46	45	43
University of Edinburgh	43	47	47	52	53	55	53
University of Florida	75	67	67	53	51	58	58
University of Freiburg	1000	88	88	93	94	96	1000
University of Ghent	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Goettingen	91	79	79	85	87	90	90
University of Groningen	84	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Heidelberg	58	64	64	66	65	67	63
University of Helsinki	74	72	72	74	73	68	72
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	45	25	25	25	26	26	25
University of Illinois at Chicago	96	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Iowa	90	1000	1000	95	97	1000	1000
University of Leiden	78	63	63	72	71	76	72
University of Manchester	89	78	53	50	48	40	41
University of Maryland, College Park	75	57	57	37	37	37	37
University of Melbourne	92	82	82	78	79	73	75
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	21	19	19	21	21	21	22
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	37	33	33	32	33	28	28
University of Munich	48	51	51	51	53	55	55
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	52	56	56	59	58	38	39
University of Nottingham	1000	80	80	79	81	82	83
University of Oslo	63	68	68	68	69	64	65
University of Oxford	9	8	8	10	10	10	10
University of Paris 6 (Pierre and Marie Curie University)	65	41	41	45	39	42	40
University of Paris 11 (Paris-Sud 11 University)	72	48	48	64	52	49	43
University of Pennsylvania	18	15	15	15	15	15	15
University of Pittsburgh	53	48	48	48	49	52	50
University of Rochester	72	52	52	74	75	73	77
Sapienza University of Rome	70	93	93	100	1000	1000	1000
University of Sheffield	68	69	69	69	72	77	81
University of Southern California	40	48	48	47	50	50	46
University of Strasbourg I (Louis Pasteur University)	1000	82	82	96	99	1000	1000
University of Sydney	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	97	94
University of Texas at Austin	47	40	40	39	38	39	38
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas	34	36	36	38	39	41	48
University of Toronto	23	24	24	24	23	24	27
University of Utah	81	95	95	94	93	79	80
University of Utrecht	40	39	39	40	42	47	52
University of Vienna	84	86	86	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Virginia	67	1000	1000	1000	1000	95	91
University of Washington	16	20	20	17	16	16	16
University of Wisconsin–Madison	27	18	18	16	17	17	17
University of Zurich	45	57	57	58	58	53	54
Uppsala University	59	74	74	65	66	71	76
Vanderbilt University	32	38	38	41	41	42	41
Washington University in St. Louis	22	28	28	28	28	29	29
Yale University	8	11	11	11	11	11	11

See also

• College and university rankings
• THE–QS World University Rankings
• HEEACT - Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities
• Webometrics Ranking of World Universities
• Global University Ranking

References

External links

• Ranking Methodology