In the Shanghai ranking, the University of Paris-Saclay climbs to thirteenth place – archyde

American universities continue to lead the Shanghai ranking, the 2021 edition of which was published on Sunday, August 15. Four French establishments remain in the top 100. The first non-Anglo-Saxon establishment with its thirteenth place out of 1,000, the University of Paris-Saclay gains one place compared to the 2020 ranking, in which it made its very first appearance. A record for a French university.

“France is once again illustrated in the Shanghai ranking, a marker of its scientific excellence and the success of our research policy! “, welcomed the Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, on Twitter.

The first ten places are, like last year, dominated by the Anglo-Saxons: eight American universities and two British occupying the top 10 of this world ranking of the best higher education establishments, carried out since 2003 by the independent firm ShanghaiRanking Consultancy .

The podium unchanged since 2017

President Emmanuel Macron also welcomed this result on Twitter and affirmed the will of the government to “To make France one of the great scientific nations”, promising “25 billion euros invested over ten years”.

“This ranking is not an end in itself, but it allows us to take a new look at French higher education, and it is thus a lever for attracting new talents, highlighting our academic teams”, explained Sylvie Retailleau, president of Paris-Saclay, in a press release on Sunday. Three other French universities are among the top 100 in the world: the PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres), which brings together several establishments including the Ecole normale supérieure (ENS), in thirty-eighth place, the Sorbonne (35^e) and the University of Paris (73^e).

In first place, Harvard is once again ahead of its compatriot Stanford and Britain’s Cambridge. Then there is the American Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4^e), Berkeley (5^e) and Princeton (6^e), then the British Oxford (7^e), an order unchanged since 2017. Created in 2003, the Shanghai ranking takes into account six criteria, including the number of Nobel prizes and Fields medals (distinction considered as the Nobel in mathematics) among graduate students and professors, the number of of researchers most cited in their discipline or the number of publications in journals Science and Nature.