three French universities remain in the top 50

Harvard University and Stanford University: the two private American universities have once again won the first places in the Shanghai ranking, centered on the establishments’ hard science research activities, published on Monday 15 August. Created in 2003 by China’s Jiao Tong University, the list has been compiled since 2009 by the consultancy company Shanghai Ranking.

The English Cambridge sells its 3^e position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and ranks 4^e, followed by Americans Berkeley and Princeton. The other English flagship, Oxford, is 7^efollowed by the Americans Columbia, Caltech and Chicago (10^e).

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Twenty-eight of the 74 French universities (two less than in 2021 and 2020) appear in this ranking, which screened more than 2,500 establishments to select the 1,000 best with regard to six criteria:

• the number of former students who have won a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal (10% of the overall score);
• the number of teacher-researchers who have won a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal (20%);
• the number of highly cited researchers (20%);
• the number of articles published in journals Nature and Science (20%);
• the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Science Citation Index (20%);
• the academic performance of professors, using the five previous indicators divided by the number of permanent lecturer-researchers (10%).

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New generation of universities

The four French universities in the top 100, located in Ile-de-France, all lose places compared to 2021: Paris-Saclay is 16^e (– 3 places), PSL 40^e (– 2), Sorbonne University 43^e (– 8) and Paris Cité 78 University^e (–5). This position “illustrates France’s international scientific influence”welcomes in a press release the Minister of Higher Education, Sylvie Retailleau, who sees in these results “stability”.

Following the Ile-de-France are the universities of Aix-Marseille, Grenoble-Alpes and Strasbourg (category 100/150^e place), followed by Montpellier (150/200^e). Next come the universities of Claude Bernard-Lyon-I, Toulouse-III-Paul Sabatier, Bordeaux and Lorraine, between the 201^e and the 300^e square. Toulouse-III-Paul Sabatier universities (201/300^e), Lille (301/400^e), Paris-East Créteil (801/900^e) and INSA Toulouse (701/800^e) pass into the higher category.

To succeed in climbing the charts, France imagined in 2018 a new generation of universities, called experimental public establishments (EPE), today numbering 14. Resulting from rapprochements, even mergers between several institutions, they offer the guarantee of presenting a sufficient critical mass in terms of research to hold the attention of the company Shanghai Ranking.

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