UU best Dutch university in the Shanghai Ranking

How many Nobel laureates are on their payroll? What about winners of the Fields Medal in Mathematics? To the compilers of the Shanghai Ranking, things like this speak volumes when it comes to the quality of a university. They also take a look at the number of researchers who have published articles in the journals Nature and Science recently; and the number of scientists whose articles are among the one per cent most cited in their field.

US and UK dominate
The ranking continues to be dominated by American universities, with Harvard taking the top spot once more. The British universities of Cambridge and Oxford are also a fixture in the top 10.

The French Université Paris-Saclay comes in at number 15. This university was formed in 2019 by a merger between a number of other institutions, with the specific goal to rise in rankings such as Shanghai and thus rival institutions from the US and China. There have been calls for universities to merge in the Netherlands too, partly with the aim of boosting their international impact.

These days, however, Dutch universities are deciding to take such rankings less seriously as they find that they “unreasonably claim to capture a university’s performance in the broadest sense, with a single number”. Overall, their attitude is ambivalent: it can be useful to measure yourself against others but what does such a crude score really say?

Recognise and reward
Another objection is that the rankings are at odds with Dutch universities’ commitment to better recognise and reward their staff. There has been a movement in Dutch academia towards giving proper recognition to work that is valuable but barely counts for the rankings, such as teaching, social impact, and leadership. In addition, research topics like the earthquakes in Groningen or social safety in the Dutch House of Representatives are unlikely to win the Nobel Prize but they are pressing issues for the Netherlands.

Dutch universities believe it still makes sense to use the rankings for marketing purposes, though. Even so, a spokesperson for Utrecht University says that the university has not prioritised them much for years. Although its website features a page about its position on the most famous rankings, the university says it has no plans to actively promote its top 100 status.

Dutch universities in the Shanghai Ranking