The Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities (ARTU) is published by the University of New South Wales. It is not an original ranking but rather a combination of three well-known rankings: the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and the QS World University Rankings. It is quite valuable since it smooths out some of the idiosyncrasies in the “Big Three” although it is unfortunate that it ignores some interesting and technically competent rankings.
The latest edition just published shows that although the rankings are generally similar for elite universities there are some differences even at the very top. For example, Oxford is in first place in the QS world rankings but ninth in ARWU, Yale is eighth in THE but seventeenth in QS, the Chinese University of Hong Kong is 43rd in QS and 149th in ARWU
The ARTU website argues that global rankings are “powerful indicators of prestige and consequently key to attracting students and recruiting/retaining academic talent.” ARTU is an aggregate of the three “global influencers” and combines the overall ranks of universities.
ARTE provides some idea of global developments over the last few years. There have been few changes at the very top but outside the top twenty there has been quite a lot of movement. Universities that have risen rapidly include Tsinghua University, Peking University, Nanyang Technological University, Monash University, and the University of New South Wales. It is suggested that the success of these and several other Chinese universities are due to access to plentiful resources.
The top ten in the current table are:
1. Stanford University, USA
2. Harvard University, USA
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA
4. University of Oxford, UK
5= University of Cambridge, UK
5= California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA
7. Princeton University, USA
8. University of Chicago, USA
9. Yale University, USA
10. ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Sources
- Sydney Morning Herald
- University of New South Wales