The University of Groningen (UG) has dropped seven places in the 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, also known as the Shanghai Ranking). The UG now occupies 66th place and is the second-highest Dutch university, behind Utrecht University, which comes 51st. In 2017, the UG rose 13 places in the Shanghai Ranking. This was largely due to the Nobel Prize being awarded to Professor Feringa in 2016.
The ARWU is a list of the global top 500 that is published annually in August. It assesses over 1,200 universities from around the world. As the ranking is based on clear methodology and objective data, it is regarded in the academic world as the most credible and reliable measure of the quality of universities worldwide.
After six years of steadily rising, the UG has now dropped slightly. The main reason for this is its Highly Cited Authors score, but the UG’s score for Nature & Science publications also fell somewhat.
As in previous years, the list is headed by Harvard University, Stanford and MIT. Also worth noting is that all U4 universities (Ghent University, University of Göttingen, UG and Uppsala University) are in the top 100.
Quality
Prospective students from abroad in particular use rankings as an important indicator of the quality of a university and thus as a measure of the quality of their degree and the investment they are making. Researchers, government bodies and businesses all consider rankings important, because they see them as a reflection of the quality of a university.
See also the Shanghai Ranking List website.
