European and American universities dominate the 2024 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), with Harvard University once again taking the top spot.
advertisement
Universities from the UK, Germany, France and Switzerland were named among the best in the world, according to the newly published Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2024.
Harvard University in Cambridge, USA, took the top spot for the 22nd consecutive year.
Following this, two American universities, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), rounded out the top three.
The UK's University of Cambridge came in fourth place, making it the highest-ranked university in Europe.
Fellow UK-based University of Oxford ranked sixth, making it only the second European university to feature in the top ten.
The remaining rankings are taken up by US universities, with the US taking eight of the top ten spots.
How are the rankings determined?
Published by Shanghai Ranking Consultants, ARWU assesses several academic and research performance indicators to determine university rankings.
These include achievements such as prestigious awards such as Nobel Prizes and Fields Medal awarded by alumni to recognise the quality of teaching, and similarly awards awarded by staff to recognise the quality of the teaching staff at the institution.
Additional criteria include the number of highly cited researchers (HiCi), the number of papers published in top journals such as Nature and Science (N&S), the number of papers indexed in major citation databases (PUB), and the institution's per capita scholarly output (PCP).
Here is an overview of this year's top 10 universities, based on their performance index scores.
What are the top universities in Europe?
In addition to the British universities of Oxford and Cambridge making the top 10, other European universities also ranked in the top 50.
This was followed by France's Paris-Saclay University, which rose three places from last year to come in at 12th place.
Next is Switzerland's ETH Zurich in 21st place, followed by Imperial College London in 25th and the University of Copenhagen in 32nd place.
In terms of representation, the United States and China had the most institutions in the top 100, with 38 and 14 respectively.
In Europe, the UK had the most universities in the top 100 with eight, followed by Switzerland, Germany and France.
advertisement
Three German universities made it into the top 50 for the first time: the University of Munich (43rd), the Technical University of Munich (47th), and the University of Heidelberg (50th).
French universities also showed an increase in competitiveness, with Paris-Saclay (12th), PSL (33rd) and Sorbonne (41st) all ranking in the top 50.
Although some European countries such as Italy, Spain, Austria and Portugal are not in the top 100 rankings, there are still several countries in the top 500.
