Shanghai Jiao Tong university rankings revealed

The top ten universities in the world have remained unchanged in the 2012 Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, but for the first time China has more universities in the top 500 than the UK.

August 14, 2012

The league table, compiled by the Chinese university and officially known as the Academic Ranking of World Universities, ranks the top ten as: Harvard University; Stanford University; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Cambridge; the California Institute of Technology; Princeton University; Columbia University; the University of Chicago; and the University of Oxford.

The US remains dominant in the rankings, which are based on research capacity, with 17 of the top 20 universities and 53 of the top 100.

Harvard came top in four out of five “broad” subject fields: natural sciences and mathematics; life and agriculture sciences; clinical medicine and pharmacy; and social sciences. MIT was ranked best for engineering/technology and computer sciences. Harvard was also top in three narrower subject fields: physics; chemistry; and economics/business. Princeton was judged best for mathematics, while Stanford came top for computer science.

The UK has seen a slight drop in its position at the top end of the table with two institutions in the top 20 and nine in the top 100, meaning it has one fewer university in each band compared with last year.

University College London has dropped one place to 21st, while the University of Sheffield has dropped out of the top 100.

The UK universities in the top 100 are the University of Cambridge (5), the University of Oxford (10), University College London (21), Imperial College London (24), the University of Manchester (40), the University of Edinburgh (51), King’s College London (68), the University of Bristol (70) and the University of Nottingham (86).

There are 38 UK universities in the top 500, more than any other country except the US (150) and China (42). However, China does not have any universities in the top 100.

The Israeli university system now has three institutions in the top 100, two more than in 2011. Australia increased its tally to five, overtaking Germany and Japan.

The rankings use six mainly research-based measures to score institutions including: alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals; highly-cited researchers according to Thomson Reuters; articles published in Nature and Science; articles indexed in Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index; and per capita performance based on the size of an institution.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings will be published in the autumn.

Shanghai 2012 rankings: top 50
World RankInstitutionCountry
1Harvard UniversityUnited States
2Stanford UniversityUnited States
3Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)United States
4University of California, BerkeleyUnited States
5University of CambridgeUnited Kingdom
6California Institute of TechnologyUnited States
7Princeton UniversityUnited States
8Columbia UniversityUnited States
9University of ChicagoUnited States
10University of OxfordUnited Kingdom
11Yale UniversityUnited States
12University of California, Los AngelesUnited States
13Cornell UniversityUnited States
14University of PennsylvaniaUnited States
15University of California, San DiegoUnited States
16University of WashingtonUnited States
17The Johns Hopkins UniversityUnited States
18University of California, San FranciscoUnited States
19University of Wisconsin - MadisonUnited States
20The University of TokyoJapan
21University College LondonUnited Kingdom
22University of Michigan - Ann ArborUnited States
23Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ZurichSwitzerland
24The Imperial College of Science, Technology and MedicineUnited Kingdom
25University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUnited States
26Kyoto UniversityJapan
New York UniversityUnited States
University of TorontoCanada
29University of Minnesota, Twin CitiesUnited States
30Northwestern UniversityUnited States
31Washington University in St. LouisUnited States
32Rockefeller UniversityUnited States
33University of Colorado at BoulderUnited States
34University of California, Santa BarbaraUnited States
35The University of Texas at AustinUnited States
36Duke UniversityUnited States
37University of Paris Sud (Paris 11)France
38University of Maryland, College ParkUnited States
39University of British ColumbiaCanada
40The University of ManchesterUnited Kingdom
41University of North Carolina at Chapel HillUnited States
42Karolinska InstituteSweden
42Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris 6France
44University of CopenhagenDenmark
45University of California, IrvineUnited States
46University of Southern CaliforniaUnited States
47University of California, DavisUnited States
48The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at DallasUnited States
49Pennsylvania State University - University ParkUnited States
50Vanderbilt UniversityUnited States

david.matthews@tsleducation.com

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