American Universities Continue to Dominate Shanghai Rankings

American institutions are once again dominating one of the most closely watched international university rankings, the academic ranking of the world’s top 500 universities, published on Tuesday by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in China. Harvard remains in the top spot, followed by Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley. As was the case last year, all but two of the top 10 institutions are in the United States, with the Universities of Cambridge and of Oxford occupying the fifth and 10th spots, respectively.
Israel and Australia have both increased the number of universities they have in the top 100, with three for Israel and five for Australia, the third highest after the United States and Britain. Five Chinese universities have moved into the top 500 for the first time, in a demonstration of the rapid development of university systems in emerging economies that was also reflected in a recent tabulation of the world’s best young universities.