US continues to dominate Shanghai university rankings

Within Europe, the UK has most institutions in the 100, at eleven, Germany has four, France three, Switzerland three, Sweden three, Denmark two and Holland two.

English-speaking universities remain predominant in the rankings, which are based on criteria including the number of alumni who are Nobel Prize winners, number of highly cited researchers in 21 subject areas, number of papers published in the journals Nature and Science, and the number of articles indexed in the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published by the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003 to provide an international yardstick for China’s own investment in its universities and to provide Chinese students going to study abroad with a league table to help them select where to go.

As yet, no Chinese universities are placed in the top 100, but they are making headway, with the two highest ranked universities in the country, Peking and Tsinghua, coming between 151 and 200 (exact positions are not given after the first 100). This is an improvement on 2009, when there were no Chinese universities in the top 200.

US still dominates 2010 list with 8 universities in the top 10 and 54 universities in the top 100. Harvard University remains number 1 in the world for the eighth year, followed by Berkeley and Stanford. MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago also appear in the top 10, as in 2009.

The best rated UK universities are Cambridge 5, Oxford 10, University College London 26, Imperial College London 26, Manchester University 44. Other highly placed European universities include: ETH Zurich (23rd) and University of Zurich (51st) in Switzerland, Paris 6 (39th) and Paris 11 (45th) in France, Copenhagen (40th) and Aarhus (98th) in Denmark, Karolinska (42nd) and Uppsala (66th) in Sweden, Utrecht (50th) and Leiden (70th) in Netherlands, Munich (52nd) and TU Munich (56th) in Germany, Helsinki (72nd) in Finland, Moscow (74th) in Russia, Oslo (75th) in Norway, and Ghent (90th) in Belgium.

In all, 106 universities from Asia-Pacific region are ranked among top 500 in 2010, among them the leaders are: Tokyo (20th) and Kyoto (24th) in Japan, ANU (59th) and Melbourne (62nd) in Australia.

The number of Chinese universities in the top 500 reaches 34 in 2010, which is more than doubled of that in 2004 (16).

The complete lists and detailed methodology can be found at the Academic Ranking of World Universities website at http://www.arwu.org/.