Academic Ranking of World Universities

Academic Ranking of World Universities

Categories	Higher education
Frequency	Annual
Publisher	Shanghai Jiao Tong University; since 2009 published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy
Country	China
Language	English
Website	ARWU

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), commonly known as the Shanghai Ranking, is a publication that was founded and compiled by the Shanghai Jiaotong University to rank universities globally. The rankings have been conducted since 2003 and updated annually. Since 2009, the rankings have been published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. ARWU is the first global ranking of universities to be published. It was initially designed to provide a global benchmark against the various universities in China so they could assess their progress.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities is regarded to be one of the three most influential and widely observed international university rankings, along with the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Its consistent and objective methodology is praised when compared with other rankings. However, it has also been criticized for its heavy focus on the natural sciences over the social sciences or humanities, and over the quality of instruction.

Methodology

The ranking compares 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 the journals 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.

The methodology used by the Shanghai Rankings is largely academic and research oriented.

Influence

As the first multi-indicator ranking of global universities, ARWU has attracted a great deal of attention from universities, governments and media. 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." In 2010, the Chronicle of Higher Education called ARWU "the best-known and most influential global ranking of universities".

One of the factors in the significant influence of ARWU is that its methodology is said to look 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." 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." Philip G. Altbach named ARWU's "consistency, clarity of purpose, and transparency" as significant strengths.

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.

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." Also, Enserink (2007) referred to ARWU and argued in a 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." The world leading think tank Rand Corporation used the ARWU ranking as evidence in their consultancy paper to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

In two subsequent research papers published by Academic Leadership (2009), then in an article published by the Times Higher Education (2009), Paul Z. Jambor of Korea University established the connection between any unfavorable image/reputation universities may develop (and/or their association, by country, to those universities linked to the wrongdoing) to a halt in their climb or even to a drop in their THE – QS World University Rankings. This is because 40% and 10% of THE – QS World Methodology is based on Academic Peer Review and Employer Review respectively. In essence, any unfavorable image developed by a group of universities, associated by country, tends to harm their collective rankings. For this reason, universities worldwide should seriously consider adhering to internationally accepted standards so that they do not run the risk of sliding in the ranks on the international front. Consequently, a number of critics consider this aspect of THE – QS World University Rankings unfair and even biased.

The new Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE-Reuters), published since 2010 is based on a revised Methodology. In the Methodology of the THE-Reuters World University Rankigs, the 'Papers per research and academic staff' {at 4.5%} and the 'Citation impact (normalised average citation per paper)' {at 32.5%} indicators make it evident that a university's ranking heavily relies on the number and quality of research papers written by its faculty. With 95% of research papers written in English, the relationship between English language use and a university's subsequent ranking thus becomes ever more clear. Jambor highlights the connection between actual English use and university rankings in a pair of research papers respectively published by the US Department of Education: ERIC and Academic Leadership.

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.

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 used are not relevant; that the aggregation methodology has a number of major problems; and that insufficient attention has been paid to fundamental choices of criteria.

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

Others have pointed out, the ARWU is known for "relying solely on research indicators", and "the ranking is heavily weighted toward institutions whose faculty or alumni have won Nobel Prizes": it does not measure "the quality of teaching or the quality of humanities."

Ioannides et al. suggested that (in common with all ranking systems they reviewed), the ranking lacked construct validity modest concordance between the Shanghai and Times rankings. They highlighted measurement precision, and transparent methodology as important issues.

Like the Times Higher Education's rankings, the ARWU has been criticized by the European Commission as well as some EU member states for "favour[ing] Anglo-Saxon higher education institutions".

Rankings

The table below contains the overall rankings as ordinal numbers (i.e., 1 is best, 2 is second best, etc.) from 2003 to 2012 for all universities that ranked in the top 100 in one of the years tabulated. 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 did not rank in the top 100 in any of the years tabulated.

University	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Aarhus University	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	93	97	98	86	86
Arizona State University	1000	1000	1000	100	96	93	94	81	78	79
Australian National University	49	53	53	54	57	59	59	59	70	64
Boston University	98	87	81	81	85	83	74	77	76	71
Brown University	49	82	86	85	70	71	69	65	65	65
California Institute of Technology	3	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
Carnegie Mellon University	61	62	62	56	60	62	59	58	55	51
Case Western Reserve University	51	65	65	70	78	83	87	97	97	99
Columbia University	10	9	9	7	7	7	7	8	8	8
Cornell University	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	13	13
Duke University	33	31	31	31	32	33	31	35	35	36
École normale supérieure - Paris	1000	85	93	99	83	73	70	71	69	73
Emory University	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	100	100	1000	1000
Free University of Berlin	95	1000	1000	99	83	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Goethe University Frankfurt	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	100	1000
Harvard University	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Template:Country data ISR Hebrew University of Jerusalem	94	90	90	60	64	65	64	52	57	53
Humboldt University of Berlin	1000	95	95	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Imperial College London	17	23	23	23	23	27	26	26	24	24
Indiana University - Bloomington	1000	1000	1000	97	90	92	93	90	82	84
Johns Hopkins University	24	22	22	20	19	20	19	18	18	17
Karolinska Institutet	39	46	45	48	53	51	50	42	44	42
King's College London	75	77	77	83	83	81	65	63	68	68
Kyoto University	30	21	21	22	22	23	24	24	27	26
Lund University	93	92	92	90	97	97	1000	1000	1000	1000
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	6	5	5	5	5	5	5	4	3	3
McGill University	79	61	61	62	63	60	65	61	64	63
McMaster University	86	88	88	90	87	89	91	88	89	92
Michigan State University	87	80	80	80	80	83	86	86	92	96
Moscow State University	1000	66	66	70	76	70	77	74	77	80
Nagoya University	68	97	97	98	94	1000	82	79	94	96
New York University	55	32	32	29	30	31	32	31	29	27
North Carolina State University	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Northwestern University	29	30	30	33	29	30	30	29	30	30
Ohio State University	81	73	73	66	61	62	62	59	63	65
Osaka University	53	54	54	61	67	68	71	75	82	83
Pennsylvania State University	40	43	43	42	43	42	45	43	45	49
Princeton University	7	7	7	8	8	8	8	7	7	7
Purdue University	80	71	71	73	68	65	65	69	61	56
Rice University	61	75	75	87	87	97	99	99	93	91
Rockefeller University	28	29	29	30	30	32	32	34	33	32
Rutgers University	38	44	44	46	47	54	55	54	59	61
Stanford University	2	2	2	3	2	2	2	3	2	2
Stockholm University	1000	97	97	84	86	86	88	79	81	81
ETH Zurich	25	27	27	27	27	24	23	23	23	23
Technical University of Munich	60	45	52	54	56	57	57	56	47	53
Template:Country data ISR Technion-Israel Institute of Technology	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	78
Texas A&M University	70	1000	1000	88	91	88	88	95	100	93
Tohoku University	64	69	69	76	76	79	84	84	97	1000
Tokyo Institute of Technology	1000	1000	1000	89	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Tufts University	83	99	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Arizona	55	76	76	76	74	77	77	78	80	77
University of Basel	96	91	91	81	82	87	85	86	89	85
University of Birmingham	1000	93	93	90	92	91	94	99	1000	1000
University of Bonn	1000	99	99	1000	99	97	98	93	94	1000
University of Bristol	55	60	60	62	62	61	61	66	70	70
University of British Columbia	35	36	36	36	36	35	36	36	37	39
University of California, Berkeley	4	4	4	4	3	3	3	2	4	4
University of California, Davis	36	42	42	42	43	48	49	46	48	47
University of California, Irvine	44	55	55	44	45	46	46	46	48	45
University of California, Los Angeles	15	16	16	14	13	13	13	13	12	12
University of California, Riverside	88	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of California, San Diego	14	13	13	13	14	14	14	14	15	15
University of California, San Francisco	13	17	17	18	18	18	18	18	17	18
University of California, Santa Barbara	26	35	35	35	35	36	35	32	33	34
University of Cambridge	5	3	2	2	4	4	4	5	5	5
University of Chicago	11	10	10	8	9	9	8	9	9	9
University College London	20	25	25	26	25	22	21	21	20	21
University of Colorado	31	34	34	34	34	34	34	32	32	33
University of Copenhagen	65	59	59	56	46	45	43	40	43	44
University of Edinburgh	43	47	47	52	53	55	53	54	53	51
University of Florida	75	67	67	53	51	58	58	68	72	72
University of Freiburg	1000	88	88	93	94	96	1000	1000	1000	99
University of Geneva	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	73	69
University of Ghent	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	90	89	89
University of Göttingen	91	79	79	85	87	90	90	93	86	1000
University of Groningen	84	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Heidelberg	58	64	64	66	65	67	63	63	62	62
University of Helsinki	74	72	72	74	73	68	72	72	74	73
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	45	25	25	25	26	26	25	25	25	25
University of Illinois at Chicago	96	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Iowa	90	1000	1000	95	97	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Leiden	78	63	63	72	71	76	72	70	65	73
University of Manchester	89	78	53	50	48	40	41	44	38	40
University of Maryland, College Park	75	57	57	37	37	37	37	36	38	38
University of Melbourne	92	82	82	78	79	73	75	62	60	57
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	21	19	19	21	21	21	22	22	22	22
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	37	33	33	32	33	28	28	28	28	29
University of Munich	48	51	51	51	53	55	55	52	54	60
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	52	56	56	59	58	38	39	41	42	41
University of Nottingham	1000	80	80	79	81	82	83	84	85	86
University of Oslo	63	68	68	68	69	64	65	75	75	67
University of Oxford	9	8	8	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University	65	41	41	45	39	42	40	39	41	42
University of Paris-Sud 11	72	48	48	64	52	49	43	45	40	37
University of Pennsylvania	18	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	14	14
University of Pittsburgh	53	48	48	48	49	52	50	56	57	58
University of Queensland	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	86	90
Sapienza University of Rome	70	93	97	100	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Rochester	72	52	52	74	75	73	77	82	84	86
University of Sheffield	68	69	69	69	72	77	81	88	97	1000
University of Southern California	40	48	48	47	50	50	46	46	46	46
University of Strasbourg	1000	82	82	96	99	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Sydney	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	97	94	92	96	93
University of Texas at Austin	47	40	40	39	38	39	38	38	35	35
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas	34	36	36	38	39	41	48	49	51	48
University of Tokyo	19	14	14	19	20	19	20	20	21	20
University of Toronto	23	24	24	24	23	24	27	27	26	27
University of Utah	81	95	95	94	93	79	80	82	79	82
Utrecht University	40	39	39	40	42	47	52	50	48	53
University of Vienna	84	86	86	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
University of Virginia	67	1000	1000	1000	1000	95	91	96	1000	1000
University of Washington	16	20	20	17	16	16	16	16	16	16
University of Western Australia	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	96
University of Wisconsin–Madison	27	18	18	16	17	17	17	17	19	19
University of Zurich	45	57	57	58	58	53	54	51	56	59
Uppsala University	59	74	74	65	66	71	76	66	67	73
Vanderbilt University	32	38	38	41	41	42	41	53	52	50
Washington University in St. Louis	22	28	28	28	28	29	29	30	31	31
Template:Country data ISR Weizmann Institute of Science	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	93
Yale University	8	11	11	11	11	11	11	11	11	11

External links

• Academic Ranking of World Universities Website
• ARWU
• Interactive maps comparing the ARWU, Times Higher Education and QS World University Rankings
• Jambor, Paul Z. 'The Changing Dynamics of PhDs and the Future of Higher Educational Development in Asia and the Rest of the World' Department of Education – The United States of America: Educational Resources Information Center, September 26, 2009 (Accessed in October, 2009)