1. Academic Ranking of World Universities
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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. It is the first world university ranking to be published and the rankings
have been conducted since 2003 and updated annually. Since 2009, the rankings have been
published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy.
The ARWU 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.[7] 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."
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

2. world's research universities." In 2010, the Chronicle of Higher Educationcalled 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 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."
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 ofKorea
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 Times Higher Education – 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

3. 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.

4. 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 2010 for all universities that ranked in the top 100 in one of the years
tabulated.[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
did not rank in the top 100 in any of the eight years tabulated.
University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Aarhus University 93 97 98
Arizona State University 100 96 93 94 81
Australian National
49 53 53 54 57 59 59 59
University
Boston University 98 87 81 81 85 83 74 77
Brown University 49 82 86 85 70 71 69 65

5. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
California Institute of
3 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
Technology
Carnegie Mellon
61 62 62 56 60 62 59 58
University
Case Western Reserve
51 65 65 70 78 83 87 97
University
Columbia University 10 9 9 7 7 7 7 8
Cornell University 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12
Duke University 33 31 31 31 32 33 31 35
École normale supérieure
85 93 99 83 73 70 71
- Paris
Emory University 99 100 100
Free University of Berlin 95 99 83
Harvard University 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Hebrew University of
94 90 90 60 64 65 64 52
Jerusalem
Humboldt University of
95 95
Berlin

6. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Imperial College London 17 23 23 23 23 27 26 26
Indiana University -
97 90 92 93 90
Bloomington
Johns Hopkins
24 22 22 20 19 20 19 18
University
Karolinska Institutet 39 46 46 48 53 51 50 42
King's College London 75 77 77 83 83 81 65 63
Kyoto University 30 21 21 22 22 23 24 24
Lund University 93 92 92 90 97 97
Massachusetts Institute
6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4
of Technology
McGill University 79 61 61 62 63 60 65 61
McMaster University 86 88 88 90 87 89 91 88
Michigan State
87 80 80 80 80 83 86 86
University
Moscow State University 66 66 70 76 70 77 74

7. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Nagoya University 68 97 97 98 94 82 79
New York University 55 32 32 29 30 31 32 31
North Carolina State
99
University
Northwestern University 29 30 30 33 29 30 30 29
Ohio State University 81 73 73 66 61 62 62 59
Osaka University 53 54 54 61 67 68 71 75
Pennsylvania State
40 43 43 42 43 42 45 43
University
Princeton University 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 7
Purdue University 80 71 71 73 68 65 65 69
Rice University 61 75 75 87 87 97 99 99
Rockefeller University 28 29 29 30 30 32 32 34
Rutgers University 38 44 44 46 47 54 55 54
Stanford University 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 3

8. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Stockholm University 97 97 84 86 86 88 79
ETH Zurich 25 27 27 27 27 24 23 23
Technical University of
60 45 45 54 56 57 57 56
Munich
Texas A&M University 70 88 91 88 88 95
Tohoku University 64 69 69 76 76 79 84 84
Tokyo Institute of
89 99
Technology
Tufts University 83 99 99
University of Arizona 55 76 76 76 74 77 77 78
University of Basel 96 91 91 81 82 87 85 86
University of
93 93 90 92 91 94 99
Birmingham
University of Bonn 99 99 99 97 98 93
University of Bristol 55 60 60 62 62 61 61 66

9. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
University of British
35 36 36 36 36 35 36 36
Columbia
University of California,
4 4 4 4 3 3 3 2
Berkeley
University of California,
36 42 42 42 43 48 49 46
Davis
University of California,
44 55 55 44 45 46 46 46
Irvine
University of California,
15 16 16 14 13 13 13 13
Los Angeles
University of California,
88
Riverside
University of California,
14 13 13 13 14 14 14 14
San Diego
University of California,
13 17 17 18 18 18 18 18
San Francisco
University of California,
26 35 35 35 35 36 35 32
Santa Barbara
University of Cambridge 5 3 2 2 4 4 4 5
University of Chicago 11 10 10 8 9 9 8 9

10. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
University College
20 25 25 26 25 22 21 21
London
University of Colorado 31 34 34 34 34 34 34 32
University of
65 59 59 56 46 45 43 40
Copenhagen
University of Edinburgh 43 47 47 52 53 55 53 54
University of Florida 75 67 67 53 51 58 58 68
University of Freiburg 88 88 93 94 96
University of Ghent 99 90
University of Göttingen 91 79 79 85 87 90 90 93
University of Groningen 84
University of Heidelberg 58 64 64 66 65 67 63 63
University of Helsinki 74 72 72 74 73 68 72 72
University of Illinois at
45 25 25 25 26 26 25 25
Urbana-Champaign

11. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
University of Illinois at
96
Chicago
University of Iowa 90 95 97
University of Leiden 78 63 63 72 71 76 72 70
University of Manchester 89 78 53 50 48 40 41 44
University of Maryland,
75 57 57 37 37 37 37 36
College Park
University of Melbourne 92 82 82 78 79 73 75 62
University of Michigan,
21 19 19 21 21 21 22 22
Ann Arbor
University of Minnesota,
37 33 33 32 33 28 28 28
Twin Cities
University of Munich 48 51 51 51 53 55 55 52
University of North
52 56 56 59 58 38 39 41
Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of
80 80 79 81 82 83 84
Nottingham
University of Oslo 63 68 68 68 69 64 65 75

12. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
University of Oxford 9 8 8 10 10 10 10 10
University of Paris 6
(Pierre and Marie Curie 65 41 41 45 39 42 40 39
University)
University of Paris 11
72 48 48 64 52 49 43 45
(Paris-Sud 11 University)
University of
18 15 15 15 15 15 15 15
Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh 53 48 48 48 49 52 50 56
Sapienza University of
70 93 97 100
Rome
University of Rochester 72 52 52 74 75 73 77 82
University of Sheffield 68 69 69 69 72 77 81 88
University of Southern
40 48 48 47 50 50 46 46
California
University of Strasbourg 82 82 96 99
University of Sydney 97 94 92
47 40 40 39 38 39 38 38
University of Texas at

13. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Austin
University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center 34 36 36 38 39 41 48 49
at Dallas
University of Tokyo 19 14 14 19 20 19 20 20
University of Toronto 23 24 24 24 23 24 27 27
University of Utah 81 95 95 94 93 79 80 82
Utrecht University 40 39 39 40 42 47 52 50
University of Vienna 84 86 86
University of Virginia 67 95 91 96
University of
16 20 20 17 16 16 16 16
Washington
University of
27 18 18 16 17 17 17 17
Wisconsin–Madison
University of Zurich 45 57 57 58 58 53 54 51
Uppsala University 59 74 74 65 66 71 76 66

14. University 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Vanderbilt University 32 38 38 41 41 42 41 53
Washington University
22 28 28 28 28 29 29 30
in St. Louis
Yale University 8 11 11 11 11 11 11 11