Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University has published its annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (AWRU), finding that American and British universities continue to dominate global rankings of tertiary education quality.  

 

A mixture of American and British universities populated the top 20, with Harvard University taking first place with a total aggregate score of 100.0 points, with Stanford University taking second place with 72.6 points.

 

The first Australian institution to feature on the list is the University of Melbourne, which took 60th place on the list, followed by the Australian National University, which placed 70th, having slipped 11 places since last year. Two Australian universities - Griffith University and University of Technology Sydney - made the top 500 list for the first time this year.

 

The complete Australian ranking in the ARWU is as follows

  • University of Melbourne – Placed 60th
  • Australian National University – Placed 70th
  • University of Queensland – Placed 86th
  • University of Sydney – Placed 96th
  • University of Western Australia – Placed 102 – 150
  • Monash University – Placed 151 – 200
  • University of New South Wales – Placed 151-200
  • Macquarie University – Placed 201 – 300
  • University of Adelaide – Placed 201 – 300
  • Flinders University – Placed 301 -400
  • James Cook University – Placed 301 – 400
  • University of Newcastle – Placed 301 – 400
  • University of Tasmania – Placed 301 – 400
  • Curtin University of Technology – Placed 401 – 500
  • Griffith University - Placed 401 - 500
  • La Trobe University – Placed 401 – 500
  • Swinburne University of Technology – Placed 401 – 500
  • University of Technology, Sydney – Placed 401 – 500

 

The report also found that progress universities in Middle East countries are remarkable. King Saud University in Saudi Arabia first appears in Top 300; King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals in Saudi Arabia, Istanbul University in Turkey and University of Teheran in Iran move up in Top 400 for the first time; Cairo University in Egypt is back to Top 500.

 

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education  of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and has been updated on an annual basis. ARWU uses six indicators to rank world universities, including 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 journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance with respect to the size of an institution. More than 1000 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 500 are published on the web.

 

The Top 500  AWRU ranking for 2011 can be found here.