Shanghai rankings reshuffled, Middle East up

There are few changes in the upper echelons of the 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities, published on Monday by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with the same eight American and two British universities making the top 10. But the ranking reports "remarkable" progress by institutions in the Middle East.
The ninth global ranking from the Center for World-Class Universities places Harvard again at the top. There was some reshuffling among the next three places, with Stanford second (up from third in 2010), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology third (up from fourth) and University of California - Berkeley fourth (down from second). The next six slots run as in 2010, with fifth place going to the Cambridge followed by the California Institute of Technology, Princeton, Columbia, University of Chicago and Oxford. There are once again 17 American universities in the top 20, five of them Californian. The other three places go to the UK, with University College London squeezing out the University of Tokyo to come it at number 20.
Continental Europe's top institution is ETH Zurich (23) in Switzerland, followed by France's Paris-Sud (40) and Pierre and Marie Curie (41). Asia's highest-ranked institutions are Japan's University of Tokyo (21) and Kyoto University (27).
The Shanghai ranking uses six indicators: the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals; number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific; number of articles published in Nature and Science; number of articles in the Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index; and per capita performance with respect to the size of an institution. These indicators make for little year-on-year change but the ranking's stability is respected. Still, this year three universities made it to the top 100 for the first time: Switzerland's University of Geneva (73), Australia's University of Queensland (88) and Germany's University of Frankfurt (100). Germany now has six universities in the top 100, and Switzerland and Australia four each.
Also, 10 universities entered the top 500 for the first time including Malaysia's University of Malaya and Croatia's University of Zagreb. This year there are 42 countries with universities in the top 500. The number of Chinese universities rose to 35 in 2011, and three made it to the top 200 - National Taiwan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University.
Perhaps the biggest news, though, is the "remarkable" progress of Middle East universities. King Saud University in Saudi Arabia appears for the first time in the top 300 institutions. Saudi Arabia's King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Turkey's Istanbul University and Iran's University of Teheran in Iran moved into the top 400. "Cairo University in Egypt is back in the top 500 after five years of staggering outside," said the Center in a statement. Africa now has four institutions in the top 500: Cairo, and South Africa's universities of Cape Town, the Witwatersrand and KwaZulu-Natal.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities 2011 also ranked the top 100 universities in five broad subject fields and in five selected subject fields. Harvard leads the lists in four of the five fields, with the best five universities:
* Natural sciences and mathematics: Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, Caltech and Cambridge.
* Engineering-technology and computer sciences: MIT, Stanford, California - Berkeley, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Georgia Institute of Technology.
* Life and Agriculture Sciences: Harvard, MIT, California - San Francisco, Cambridge and Washington (Seattle).
* Clinical medicine and pharmacy: Harvard, California - San Francisco, Washington (Seattle), Johns Hopkins and Columbia.
* Social Sciences: Harvard, Chicago, MIT, Berkeley and Columbia.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities rates more than 1,000 universities worldwide but only publishes the list of the top 500. In January the Center for World-Class Universities kicked off the Global Research University Profile project, which will develop a database on around 1,200 global research universities. The data gathered, it says, will be used to design more indicators and users will be able to compare universities with a variety of indicators of their choice.
Voir aussi sur le blog la catégorie "Classement", en particulier les articles suivants: The Futility of Ranking Academic Journals, Are rankings driving university elitism?, Do rankings promote trickle down knowledge?, « Hit-parade des universités: la France stagne au huitième rang du classement de Shanghai » et « Nous récoltons les fruits des efforts enclenchés dans l'enseignement supérieur », Les universités françaises à la peine dans le classement de Shanghai, New International Ranking System Has a DIY Twist, Les classements des chercheurs en question, Questions Abound as the College-Rankings Race Goes Global,  International Group Announces Audit of University Rankings.