Disappointing results for Europe in list of world's top 500 universities

Brussels, 08 Jan 2004

China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University has published a list of the world's top 500 universities, with disappointing results for Europe's institutions.

The two year study took account of each institution's Nobel laureates, highly cited researchers, articles published in 'Nature' and 'Science', articles in the 'science citation index-extended' and 'social science citation index', and the academic performance of each faculty. An equal weighting is given to each of these criteria.

Only the UK has any universities in the top 20 - (Cambridge - 5th, Oxford - 9th, Imperial College - 17th and University College London - 20th), the rest being American with the exception of Tokyo University in Japan.

In total, Europe has 31 universities in the top 100. In addition to the UK, institutions from Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, Finland, Austria and Belgium also make an appearance. The list is however dominated by the US.

Hungary fares best from the EU's acceding countries, its Szeged University sharing position 201 with 49 other institutions. The Czech Republic is the only other acceding country to have a university in the top 500. The highest ranking European universities are those from northern Europe. Only Italy has two institutions in the top 150.

For further information, please visit:
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm

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