ARWU Academic Ranking of World Universities - ShanghaiRanking 2024 | Must-know for Students

• Publisher: ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, China
• Latest ranking publication date: 15 August, 2024
• Publication frequency: Annual
• Geographic focus: Global
• Ranking type: University rankings.
• Year of first publication: 2003
• 1000 universities in ranking

The methodology used by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is based on four criteria:

• Quality of Education (10%)
• Quality of Faculty (40%)
• Research Output (40%)
• Per Capita Performance (10%)

How those are calculated, however, may not be exactly as expected: An institution is considered to have a higher quality of education based on the number of alumni who have won Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals. This same indicator is used, in part, to gauge the quality of an institution’s faculty members. Half of the weight allocated to quality of faculty is based on the instructors at the university who have received Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals, the other half counts the Highly Cited Researchers on staff.

Research output is judged according to citations: half of the weight is calculated considering the number of papers indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index, while the other half is based on the quantity of papers published in Nature and Science journals. Where institutions are specialised in the humanities and/or social sciences, the weight of Nature and Science journals is reallocated to other indicators.

The fourth criteria, per capita performance, takes the sum of the other weighted criteria and divides it by the number of instructors on staff.

Types of Data Collected Directly by the Publisher

external data only

External databases/data providers used

http://www.nobelprize.org/ http://www.mathunion.org/ https://clarivate.com/hcr/ http://www.webofscience.com/ National Ministry of Education National Bureau of Statistics National Association of Universities and Colleges National Rector's Conference

Criteria for including/excluding universities

Rates all universities with alumnis and/or staff who have won Nobel prizes or Fields medals, or are Highly Cited Researchers, or which have papers published in Nature or Science. Universities are also included when they have a significant amount of papers indexed by SCIE (Science Citation Index-Expanded) and SSCI (Social Science Citation Index). More than 2000 universities are ranked but only the top 1000 are published.

Criteria Classification

• 100% Academic Performance
• 0% Teaching/Student Experience/Non-academic output/Student Outcome

• Research publications and citations
• Academic reputation - survey or other
• Student Survey
• Internationalization (% of foreign staff/students/exchange)
• Employer reputation survey or Salary data

Methodology

http://www.shanghairanking.com/methodology/arwu/2024

Rating

4.0 / 5.0

Popularity

Google results for: ARWU: 1100000

PROS

-no subjective data sources -1000 universities from around the globe

CONS

-large percentage based on awards received -possible bias favouring larger institutions

Practical use

Among the top three global rankings, the ShanghaiRankings differ from their Western counterparts in a significant way. Since all of the data used to create this ranking is objective and is mostly based on research and awards, the list they provide says something a little different about the institutions in question. While there is still nothing here about student experience, the ARWU points to universities which place great importance on their faculty, the research conducted there, and university publications. Employers, parents and students alike can, and do, consult these rankings to learn which institutions are leaders in their fields -- and the GRAS subject rankings are even more specific to that end.

Criticism

The main criticism directed at this ranking has to do with the fact that their methodology does not make any adjustments for the size of the institutions ranked. Meaning that larger universities are more likely to rank higher up in the list, which is a common bone of contention with university rankings in general, larger institutions have more faculty & research staff and so will have more publications on a yearly basis and are more often quoted in other published articles. Detractors feel that the criteria is too heavily weighted in favour of awards while it could give more importance to teaching quality and the humanities instead.