University of Turku Again among Best Universities in the World on Shanghai List
The University of Turku was ranked among the 301–400 best universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities this year. Simultaneously, the drop in the ranking of the University of Turku that had lasted for a few years changed course for a strong rise.
The global Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) for 2018 was published on Wednesday 15 August.
On the so-called Shanghai List, the University of Turku was ranked among the 301–400 best universities. During the last two rounds, the University has been ranked between 401–500. The ranking has been published since 2003.
The indicators of ShanghaiRanking include the number of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals awarded to the alumni and staff, a high number of cited researchers, and the number of articles in the Nature and Science journals. The ranking favours large universities and universities with strong research in medicine and so-called hard sciences.
ARWU has also published a ranking of academic subjects. Making it to the ranking required a certain number of publications in the given subject. This threshold value varied between different subjects. The Institute of Dentistry at the University of Turku was ranked as the 24th best in the world and the Department of Nursing Science as the 44th. Several units of the University of Turku were successful in the ranking of academic subjects, which in turn reflects the multidisciplinarity of high-quality research.
Harvard University from the United States kept its position as the best university in the world. Two European universities made it to the top ten: Cambridge and Oxford in Britain, the other universities in the top ten were from the United States. Of the Nordic universities, the University of Copenhagen holds the best ranking being 29th.
As for the Finnish universities, the University of Helsinki, which is the largest university in Finland, was ranked in the top 100 being 57th. Next ones in the ranking were the University of Turku and Aalto University (category 301–400). Of the Finnish universities, the University of Eastern Finland also reached the top 500 (category 401–500).
The ranking is published annually by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, and it is compiled by the Jiao Tong University which was placed in the 101–150 category again in this year's ranking.
It is estimated that there are over 15,000 universities in the world.
Read more:
The ARWU 2018 ranking at the ShanghaiRanking website
Text: Pirkko Mäenpää
Translation: Aura Jaakkola