The University of Groningen has risen one place on the Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the Shanghai Ranking.
According to the Groninger Internet Courant, the RUG is the second highest ranking Dutch university on the list: Utrecht University came in 49th place. Two other Dutch universities were included in the top 100 this year: Leiden University in 74th place and Erasmus University Rotterdam placed 79th. The top ten positions are dominated by American Ivy League schools and Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge universities in the United Kingdom).
In 2017, the RUG came in at 59th place due in large part to professor Ben Feringa being awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2016. As of August 2019, the RUG is ranked 79th in THE World University Rankings, 115th in the QS World University Rankings and 101st in the U.S. News “Best Global Universities Ranking”.
The ARWU has been published since 2003, and there are currently more than 1,800 universities that take part in the ranking. Universities are evaluated based on six indicators: “the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate Analytics, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance of a university.”
Each of the rankings relies on different methodology, ranging from self-reporting to peer evaluations, and typically evaluate academic institutions as a whole rather than focusing on the performance of individual faculties. Within the Netherlands, individual departments are assessed in the Keuzegids for bachelor and master degree programmes, as well as universities on an institutional level.
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 alike often use the rankings as a shorthand for the overall quality of a university.
