Shanghai's Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education Publishes its Second Annual Listing of the World's top 500 Research Universities. (August 31, 2004)

    Last year Shanghai's Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education rose top prominence in world academic circles and even the mass media by publishing its evaluation of the worlds research universities, and while the usual criticisms of "meaningless" and "their opinion" were heard, on the whole the rankings have come to have been accepted as having overall validity. Those ranks placed ANU in joint 49^th place and Melbourne University 92^nd. This year ANU dropped to 53 while Melbourne rose to joint (3) 82^nd place.

This is how we summarised their 2003 analysis in a December 12, 2003 News and Views:

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Publishes University World Rankings: ANU, 49;  Melbourne 92. (December 12, 2003)

    Two years ago, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education undertook to establish a worldwide academic ranking of universities by evaluating their academic or research performance. They have now published their "Academic Ranking of World Universities - 2003". Rankings are based on the five criteria shown in the table.

 

Click here for a table of the top 101

 

    The ranking gives overall scores only for the top 101 universities with Harvard = 100, Stanford (#2) = 83.5.

ANU (tied #49) = 33.9, and the University of Melbourne (#92) = 26.8. 

    Thirteen of Australia's universities got into the top 500 list as follows, where rankings above 101 are only listed as within blocks of ~50.

 

Ranking	University
49	Australian National University
92	University of Melbourne
102 - 151	University of Queensland       University of Sydney
152 - 200	Monash University       University of New South Wales       University of Western Australia
201 - 250	University of Adelaide
251 - 300	None
301 - 350	Macquarie University
351 - 400	University of Newcastle       University of Tasmania
401 - 450	James Cook University       La Trobe University
451 - 500	None

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We've also pointed out that of the 9 University of California campuses (they are public universities) 7 were ranked in the world's top fifty research universities (Berkeley, 4; San Francisco, 13; San Diego, 14; UCLA, 15; Santa Barbara, 26; Davis, 36, and Irvine, 44). In 2004 this has dropped to six of the nine UC campuses are in the top 50 (the Irving campus has dropped out.

The complete analysis for 2004 is now available at http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/top500list.htm and some refinements have been put in place. For example the current scoring system has been augmented to:

    *For institutions specialising in humanities and social sciences such as London School of Economics, N&S is not considered, and the weight of N&S is relocated to other indicators.

The top fifty universities and their scores are given below and Harvard once again ranks well above the rest.

This year Australia's Universities filled 14 of the top 500 places:

Australia lost one place in the top 500 (James Cook University) but gained two (Flinders and Murdoch) so that 14 of Australia's 38 public universities rank in the top 500.

On the other hand we really do need to understand the important matters in a government's evaluation of the state of the nation: