Once again, CU is the only Slovak university in the ARWU Shanghai ranking
Bratislava, 16 August, 2022: Yesterday, one of the three most prestigious university rankings published its latest edition. Comenius University Bratislava is, again, the only Slovak university to appear in it, improving its position from last year and landing in the 701st - 800th place band.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai ranking, is one of the "big three" rankings, along with the QS World University Rankings and THE (Times Higher Education). The rankings collectively shape the era of global assessment of higher education institutions. This year, two other Slovak universities made it to Shanghai Ranking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS). Our country, however, still only has one university in the main ranking of ARWU.
The ARWU traditionally ranks 1,000 top universities selected from a shortlist of over 2,500 assessed institutions. Last year, CU ranked 801st-900th jumping up 100 places in the current edition. This year again Harvard University was ranked the best in the world. At the moment the Shanghai ranking features eight universities from the Czech Republic, of which best-placed is Charles University in the 301st-400th place band.
The Shanghai ranking focuses on academic or research performance through six indicators:
- number of alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10%),
- number of staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20%),
- number of highly cited researchers (20%),
- number of papers in Nature and Science (20%),
- number of papers indexed in SCI-E and SSCI (20%),
- per capita academic performance (10%).
The ranking also assesses performance in individual academic subjects. In Physics, Comenius University ranks 301st-400th and in Clinical Medicine 401st-500th.
„I am pleased that in this year’s ARWU ranking Comenius University did better than last year. It is, however, lamentable that it continues to be the only Slovak university in the ranking. I hope that our government will reconsider the unprecedented reduction of funding of Slovak universities, because if it fails to do so, we will only have very limited opportunities for attracting more highly cited researchers or Nobel Prize winners. We hope that we can maintain our ranking, although we need to fight for bare survival rather than aim for continued growth,“ says the Rector of Comenius University Marek Števček.
Comenius University is the only Slovak university which regularly features in other global rankings. In the QS World University Rankings it placed in the 651st-700th place band. In the Round University Ranking it reached the 426th place, but ranked as high as 178th in the Education category. In the CWUR ranking it occupies the 630th place. It ranks 587th in the prestigious Best Global Universities ranking, but ranks 244th in Physics. The SCImago ranking puts it in 573rd place. It is ranked 701st-750th in the NTU (National Taiwan University) Rankings, and in Physics it ranks 275th in the world. The Three University Missions MosIUR ranks it 272nd and THE Impact Rankings puts it in the 601st-800th place band. THE WUR Ranking places Comenius University in the 1001st - 1200th place band.