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The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world
university ranking College and university rankings order higher education institutions based on various criteria, with factors differing depending on the specific ranking system. These rankings can be conducted at the national or international level, assessing inst ...
s. The league table was originally compiled and issued by
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is a public university in Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 98 ...
in 2003, making it the first global university ranking with multifarious indicators. Since 2009, ARWU has been published and copyrighted annually by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an organization focusing on higher education that is not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies. In 2011, a board of international advisory consisting of scholars and policy researchers was established to provide suggestions. The publication currently includes global league tables for institutions as 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 The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with '' Times ...
'' and ''
Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', often referred to as the THE Rankings, is the annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symon ...
''. It has received positive feedback for its objectivity and methodology, but draws wide criticism as it fails to adjust for the size of the institution, and thus larger institutions tend to rank above smaller ones.


Global rankings


Overall


Methodology


Reception

EU Research Headlines reported the ARWU's work on 31 December 2003: "The universities were carefully evaluated using several indicators of research performance." A survey on higher education published by ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'' in 2005 commented ARWU as "the most widely used annual ranking of the world's research universities." In 2010, ''
The Chronicle of Higher Education ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is an American newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals, including staff members and administrators. A subscription ...
'' called ARWU "the best-known and most influential global ranking of universities" and Philip G. Altbach named ARWU's 'consistency, clarity of purpose, and transparency' as significant strengths.
University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
Chancellor Chris Patten has said "the methodology looks fairly solid ... it looks like a pretty good stab at a fair comparison." While ARWU has originated in China, the ranking have been praised for being unbiased towards Asian institutions, especially Chinese institutions.


Criticism

The ranking has been criticised for "relying too much on award factors" thus undermining the importance of quality of instruction and
humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...
. A 2007 paper published in the journal ''
Scientometrics Scientometrics is a subfield of informetrics that studies quantitative aspects of scholarly literature. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citati ...
'' found that the results from the Shanghai rankings could not be reproduced from raw data using the method described by Liu and Cheng. A 2013 paper in the same journal finally showed how the Shanghai ranking results could be reproduced. 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. 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 ngAnglo-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 and the unreasonable weight given to research often performed decades ago. It is also criticised in France for its use as a motivation for merging universities into larger ones. Several methods for ranking universities were analyzed. Many scholars proposed developing new methodologies for global university rankings, expressing concerns about bias against universities in the Arab region within current ranking systems. They emphasized the need to adjust the weighting of indicators to account for overlooked institutional differences. 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 significantly increase the merged institutions' score and give it a higher ranking, without any change in quality.


Subjects

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.


Regional rankings

Considering the development of specific areas, two independent regional league tables with different methodologies were launched – Ranking of Top Universities in Greater China and Best Chinese Universities Ranking. Best Chinese Universities Ranking was first released in 2015. Ranking of Top Universities in Greater China was first released in 2011.


Methodology


See also

*
List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation The following list shows the university affiliations of individual winners of the Nobel Prize since 1901 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences since 1969. The affiliations are those at the time of the Nobel Prize announcement. Universi ...


Notes


References


External links

* * Jambor, Paul Z
'The Changing Dynamics of PhDs and the Future of Higher Educational Development in Asia and the Rest of the World'
Department of Education – The United States of America: Educational Resources Information Center, {{Authority control University and college rankings 2003 introductions Annual publications Shanghai Jiao Tong University