Shanghai ranking places University of Vienna in top 150

Five Austrian universities are listed among the world’s top 500 in this year’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, ORF reported. The University of Vienna is Austria’s highest-ranked institution, placed between 101st and 150th.

As in previous years, Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lead the ranking. From 101st place, universities are grouped in bands of 50; from 201st, they are grouped in bands of 100.

The Medical University of Vienna and the University of Innsbruck are listed in the 201st to 300th range. Vienna University of Technology ranks between 301st and 400th, while the University of Graz is placed between 401st and 500th.

The Medical University of Graz and the Medical University of Innsbruck are no longer among the top 500, both falling into the 501st to 600th range.

Britain’s University of Cambridge is Europe’s highest-ranked institution in fourth place. English-speaking universities dominate the top positions, while France’s Paris-Saclay University is the highest-ranked institution from a non-English-speaking country, in 13th place.

The Shanghai ranking is strongly focused on research and relies mainly on publicly available databases. The quality of an institution’s researchers and its research output each account for 40 percent of the score. Researcher quality is measured by the number of Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners and highly cited researchers, while output is assessed through publications in Science and Nature and citation counts.

Education quality and productivity per researcher each account for 10 percent. Education quality is measured by the number of Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners among graduates. The ranking assessed 2,500 higher education institutions and published results for the top 1,000.