Last week, the world’s leading higher education evaluation institution, ShanghaiRanking, officially released the “ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)”!

ARWU is the first comprehensive ranking of world universities globally and was first published in June 2003. 2024 ARWU is the 22nd edition.

ARWU occupies the leading role in the ranking of international universities by virtue of its objective and transparent evaluation system, which is one of the most influential and authoritative university rankings in the world that has been widely reported and cited around the world. Many governments and universities analyze their situations according to the ranking, and conduct various measures to elevate the international competitiveness of universities.

1. The standard of ranking

ARWU is well-known for its objective, transparent and stable evaluation methods, which adopts objective indicators and third-party data that are internationally comparable, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in the Web of Science, and per capita performance of a university.

2. Harvard ranks first in the world, and Tsinghua University retains the title in Asia

In the 2024 ranking, Harvard is still on the top of the list, ranking first worldwide for 22 consecutive years, followed by Stanford and MIT. Among European universities, University of Cambridge and University of Oxford have the best performance, ranking fourth and sixth. Paris-Saclay University rises to 12th, continuing to lead universities on the European continent. In the Asia Pacific region, Tsinghua University ranks 22nd globally and remains the top university in Asia, while the University of Melbourne ranks 37th and maintains its position as the top university in Oceania.

3. The number of Chinese mainland universities on the list continues to grow, with three new universities added to the global Top 100

In the top 1000 global universities list, in this year, there are 203 Chinese mainland universities on the list, with an increase of 12 compared to last year, surpassing the number of universities on the list from the United States (183) and ranking first globally, reflecting the increasing academic abilities and international influences of Chinese research university community.

Tsinghua University has the highest ranking and maintains its 22nd place globally. Peking University rises 5 places, ranking 24th globally. Zhejiang University rises 6 places to rank 27th globally. Shanghai Jiao Tong University rises 8 places to rank 38th globally. The University of Science and Technology of China (42nd) and Fudan University (50th) enter the global top 50 for the first time, while Sun Yat-sen University (72nd), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (79th), Nanjing University (82nd), and Central South University (94th) remain in the global top 100.

Wuhan University (89th), Xi’an Jiaotong University (95th), and Sichuan University (98th) have made significant progress and entered the global top 100 for the first time. So far, 13 universities in mainland China have ranked among the global top 100 with solid academic output, and the top 100 universities in mainland China also outnumber the 8 in the UK, ranking2 nd in the world.