The 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was released on Monday. Because it’s compiled by Shanghai Jiaotong University, it’s commonly known as “the Shanghai ranking.” As I recently blogged about here, the methodologies used in global university rankings typically advantage English-language universities. This year’s Shanghai ranking confirms this: 20 of the Top 25 universities in the ARWU are located in the United States, and four are located in the United Kingdom.
Interestingly, the Top 5 Canadian universities in this year’s Shanghai ranking are not the so-called “Big Five,” a group that has advocated as a block to receive more federal research dollars (a phenomenon that I’ve blogged about here). Indeed, the ARWU ranks McMaster ahead of both the U. of Alberta and the U. of Montreal.
Irrespective of whether you believe in the claim of the so-called “Big Five” Canadian universities that they deserve a greater share of research dollars, it’s not clear to me that Canada’s Big Five are in fact our Top Five.