Academic Ranking of World Universities

Academic Ranking of World Universities
Categories Higher education
Frequency Annual
Publisher Shanghai Ranking Consultancy (2009–present)
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2003–2008)
Country China
Language Ten languages with English & Chinese
Website www.shanghairanking.com

Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003, making it the first global university ranking with multifarious indicators.[1][2]

Since 2009, ARWU has been published and copyrighted annually by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an independent organization focusing on higher education.[3] In 2011, a board of international advisory consisting of scholars and policy researchers was established to provide suggestions.[4][5] The publication currently includes global league tables for institutions and a whole and for a selection of individual subjects, alongside independent regional Greater China Ranking and Macedonian HEIs Ranking.

ARWU is regarded as one of the three most influential and widely observed university rankings, alongside QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education World University Rankings.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] It is often praised for the objectivity, stability and transparency of its methodology,[10][11][12] but draws some criticism for heavily focusing on scientific research and downplaying the quality of instruction; it also does not adequately adjust for the size of the institution, so that larger institutions would tend to rank above smaller ones.[9][13][14]

Global rankings

Overall

Methodology

ARWU methodology[15]
CriterionIndicatorCodeWeightingSource
Quality of education
Alumni
  • 10%
Official websites of Nobel Laureates & Fields Medalists[Note 1]
Quality of faculty
  • Staff as Nobel Laureates & Fields Medalists
  • Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories
Award
HiCi
  • 20%
  • 20%
Official websites of Nobel Laureates & Fields Medalists[Note 1]
Thomson Reuters' survey of highly cited researchers[Note 1]
Research output
  • Papers published in Nature and Science[* 1]
  • Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index
N&S
PUB
  • 20%
  • 20%
Citation index
Per capita performance
  • Per capita academic performance of an institution
PCP
  • 10%
--
*
  1. ↑ Not applicable to institutions specialized in humanities and social sciences whose N&S scores are relocated to other indicators.

Reception

ARWU is praised by several media and institutions for its methodology and influence. 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."[16] In 2010, The Chronicle of Higher Education called ARWU "the best-known and most influential global ranking of universities".[17] EU Research Headlines reported the ARWU's work on 31 December 2003: "The universities were carefully evaluated using several indicators of research performance."[18] Chancellor of University of Oxford, Chris Patten and former Vice-Chancellor of Australian National University, Ian Chubb, said: "the methodology looks fairly solid ... it looks like a pretty good stab at a fair comparison." and "The SJTU rankings were reported quickly and widely around the world… (and they) offer an important comparative view of research performance and reputation." respectively.[19] Philip G. Altbach named ARWU's 'consistency, clarity of purpose, and transparency' as significant strengths.[20] While ARWU has originated in China, the ranking have been praised for being unbiased towards Asian institutions.[21]

Criticism

The ranking is condemned for "relying too much on award factors" thus undermining the importance of quality of instruction and humanities.[22][9][23][24] 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.[25] A 2013 paper in the same journal finally showed how the Shanghai ranking results could be reproduced.[26] In a report from April 2009, J-C. Billaut, D. Bouyssou and Ph. Vincke analyse 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.[27] 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. ARWU has been criticised by the European Commission as well as some EU member states for "favour[ing] Anglo-Saxon higher education institutions". For instance, ARWU is repeatedly criticised in France, where it triggers an annual controversy, focusing on its ill-adapted character to the French academic system[28][29] and the unreasonable weight given to research often performed decades ago.[30] It is also criticised in France for its use as a motivation for fusing universities into larger ones.[31] Indeed, a further criticism has been that the metrics used are not independent of university size, e.g. number of publications or award winners will mechanically add as universities are grouped, independently of research (or teaching) quality; thus a merger between two equally-ranked institutions will almost double the merged institutions score and give it a higher ranking, without any change in quality.[14]

Results

Academic Ranking of World Universities (500) – Top 10[32][Note 2]
Academic Ranking of World Universities, 2003-2018, Top ten
Institution200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017 2018
United States Harvard University 111111111111111 1
United States Stanford University 223322232222222 2
United Kingdom University of Cambridge 532244455555543 3
United States Massachusetts Institute of Technology 655555543343354 4
United States University of California, Berkeley 444433324434435 5
United States Princeton University 778888877776666 6
United Kingdom University of Oxford 9810101010101010101091077 7
United States Columbia University 1097777788888898 8
United States California Institute of Technology 366666666667789 9
United States University of Chicago 1110989999999991010 10

Alternative

As it may take much time for rising universities to produce Nobel laureates and Fields Medalists with numbers comparable to those of older institutions, the Institute created alternative rankings excluding such award factors so as to provide another way of comparisons of academic performance. The weighting of all the other factors remains unchanged, thus the grand total of 70%.

Alternative Rankings (500) – Top 10[Note 2]
Institution2014[33]2015[34]
United States Harvard University11
United States Stanford University22
United StatesMassachusetts Institute of Technology43
United States University of California, Berkeley34
United States California Institute of Technology55
United Kingdom University of Oxford66
United Kingdom University of Cambridge87
United States University of California, San Diego78
United States University of Washington109
United States Yale University910

Subject

There are two categories in ARWU's disciplinary rankings, broad subject fields and specific subjects. The methodology is similar to that adopted in the overall table, including award factors, paper citation, and the number of highly cited scholars.

Broad fields[35] Specific subjects[36]
Natural sciences and mathematics Mathematics
Computer science and engineering Physics
Life and agricultural sciences Chemistry
Clinical medicine and pharmacy Computer science
Social sciences Economics and business

Regional rankings

Considering the development of specific areas, two independent regional league tables with different methodologies were launched.

Greater China

Methodology

Methodology of Greater China Rankings[37][Note 2]
CriterionIndicatorWeight
Education
  • Percentage of graduate students
  • Percentage of non-local students
  • Ratio of academic staff to students
  • Doctoral degrees awarded
  • Alumni as Nobel Laureates & Fields Medalists
  • 5%
  • 5%
  • 5%
  • 10%
  • 10%
Research
  • Annual research income
  • Nature & Science Papers
  • SCIE & SSCI papers
  • International patents
  • 5%
  • 10%
  • 10%
  • 10%
Faculty
  • Percentage of academic staff with a doctoral degree
  • Staff as Nobel Laureates and Fields Medalists
  • Highly cited researchers
  • 5%
  • 10%
  • 10%
Resources
  • Annual budget
  • 5%

Results

Greater China Rankings (100) – Top 10[Note 2][38]
Institution2011201220132014
China Tsinghua University 1111
Taiwan National Tsing Hua University 4332
Taiwan National Taiwan University 1223
Hong Kong The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology 5474
China Peking University 7755
Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong 3646
Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong 6567
China University of Science & Technology of China 911108
Taiwan National Chiao Tung University 8889
China Zhejiang University 109910

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Official datum sources adopted by ARWU: Nobel Laureate Web, Fields Medalist Web, Thomson Reuters' survey of highly cited researchers & Thomson Reuters' Web of Science.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Order shown in accordance with the latest result.

References

  1. ↑ Pavel, Adina-Petruta. "Global university rankings - a comparative analysis" (PDF). ScienceDirect.
  2. ↑ "World university rankings: how much influence do they really have?". The Guardian. 2013. Retrieved 27 January 2015. The first international rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities or Shanghai Rankings
  3. ↑ "About Academic Ranking of World Universities". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 26 September 2014. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy.
  4. ↑ "Shanghai rankings rattle European universities". ABS-CBN Interactive. 8 December 2010. Retrieved 27 January 2015. France's higher education minister travelled to Jiaotong University's suburban campus last month to discuss the rankings, the Norwegian education minister came last year and the Danish minister is due to visit next month.; The idea for the rankings was born in 1998, when Beijing decreed China needed several world-leading universities.
  5. ↑ "ARWU International Advisory Board". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
  6. ↑ Network, QS Asia News (2018-03-02). "The history and development of higher education ranking systems - QS WOWNEWS". QS WOWNEWS. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  7. ↑ "About Academic Ranking of World Universities | About ARWU". www.shanghairanking.com. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  8. ↑ Ariel Zirulnick. "New world university ranking puts Harvard back on top". The Christian Science Monitor. Those two, as well as Shanghai Jiao Tong University, produce the most influential international university rankings out there
  9. 1 2 3 Indira Samarasekera & Carl Amrhein. "Top schools don't always get top marks". The Edmonton Journal. Archived from the original on October 3, 2010. There are currently three major international rankings that receive widespread commentary: The Academic World Ranking of Universities, the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education Rankings.
  10. 1 2 Philip G. Altbach (11 November 2010). "The State of the Rankings". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 27 January 2015. The major international rankings have appeared in recent months — the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS World University Rankings, and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE).
  11. 1 2 "Strength and weakness of varsity rankings". NST Online. 2016-09-14. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  12. 1 2 Marszal, Andrew (2012-10-04). "University rankings: which world university rankings should we trust?". ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  13. ↑ ""Shanghai Academic Ranking: a French Controversy" by Marc Goetzmann, for ''La Jeune Politique''". Lajeunepolitique.com. 29 August 2013. Archived from the original on 9 January 2015. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  14. 1 2 Bahram Bekhradnia (15 December 2016). "International university rankings: For good or ill?" (PDF). Higher Education Policy Institute. p. 16. Retrieved 10 June 2017. ARWU presents a further data issue. Whereas in the case of the other rankings the results are adjusted to take account of the size of institutions, hardly any such adjustment is made by ARWU. So there is a distortion in favour of large institutions. If two institutions were to merge, the very fact of merger would mean that the merged institution would do nearly twice as well as either of the individual institutions prior to merger, although nothing else had changed.
  15. ↑ "ARWU – Methodology". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  16. ↑ "A world of opportunity". The Economics. 8 September 2005. Archived from the original on 18 July 2012. Retrieved 30 January 2015. It is no accident that the most widely used annual ranking of the world's research universities, the Shanghai index, is produced by a Chinese university.
  17. ↑ "International Group Announces Audit of University Rankings". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 10 October 2010. Retrieved 30 January 2015. ...Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which produces the best-known and most influential global ranking of universities...
  18. ↑ "Chinese study ranks world's top 500 universities". European Research Headlines. 2003. Archived from the original on 2015-01-09. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
  19. ↑ "Rankings and Accountability in Higher Education: Uses and Misuses". United Nations Educational. 2013. p. 26. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  20. ↑ Philip G. Altbach (11 September 2010). "The State of the Rankings". INSIDE HIGHER ED. Retrieved 30 January 2015. Nonetheless, AWRU's consistency, clarity of purpose, and transparency are significant advantages.
  21. ↑ "Academic Ranking of World Universities 2013 released". Times Higher Education (THE). Retrieved 2016-01-20.
  22. ↑ "University rankings: which world university rankings should we trust?". The Telegraph. 2015. Retrieved 27 January 2015. It is a remarkably stable list, relying on long-term factors such as the number of Nobel Prize-winners a university has produced, and number of articles published in Nature and Science journals. But with this narrow focus comes drawbacks. China's priority was for its universities to 'catch up' on hard scientific research. So if you're looking for raw research power, it's the list for you. If you're a humanities student, or more interested in teaching quality? Not so much.
  23. ↑ J. Scott Armstrong and Tad Sperry (1994). "Business School Prestige: Research versus Teaching" (PDF). Energy & Environment. 18 (2): 13–43. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-06-20.
  24. ↑ "1741-7015-5-30.fm" (PDF). Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  25. ↑ Răzvan V. Florian (17 June 2007). "Irreproducibility of the results of the Shanghai academic ranking of world universities". Scientometrics. 72 (1): 25–32. doi:10.1007/s11192-007-1712-1. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  26. ↑ Domingo Docampo (1 July 2012). "Reproducibility of the results of the Shanghai academic ranking of world universities". Scientometrics. 94 (2): 567–587. doi:10.1007/s11192-012-0801-y. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
  27. ↑ Jean-Charles Billaut, Denis Bouyssou & Philippe Vincke. "Should you believe in the Shanghai ranking?". CCSD. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  28. ↑ ""Shanghai Academic Ranking: a French Controversy" by Marc Goetzmann, for ''La Jeune Politique''". Lajeunepolitique.com. 29 August 2013. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  29. ↑ Spongenberg, Helena (5 June 2014). "EUobserver / EU to test new university ranking in 2010". Euobserver.com. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  30. ↑ Dagorn, Gary (16 August 2016). "Universités : pourquoi le classement de Shanghaï n'est pas un exercice sérieux" (in French). lemonde.fr. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
  31. ↑ Gérand, Christelle (September 2016). "Aix-Marseille, laboratoire de la fusion des universités" (in French). www.monde-diplomatique.fr. Retrieved 8 September 2016.
  32. ↑ "Academic Ranking of World Universities 2018". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  33. ↑ "Alternative Ranking 2014 ( Excluding Award Factor ) ( Excluding Award Factor )". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  34. ↑ "Alternative Ranking 2015 ( Excluding Award Factor )". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2015. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
  35. ↑ "Academic Rankings of World Universities in subject fields". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  36. ↑ "Academic Rankings of World Universities in specific subjects". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  37. ↑ "Greater China Ranking – Methodology". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  38. ↑ "Greater China Rankings". Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2014. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
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