Since the creation of this list in 2003, never has a French establishment crossed the top 15 bar. It is now done, the University of Paris-Saclay has just won 14th place in the 2020 ranking of the Academic Ranking of World Universities, better known as the Shanghai Ranking.
This is a holy grail for this complex, set up last January among other things to better figure in this ultra-prestigious international classification but also much criticized. In July, Paris-Saclay had already been crowned world champion in mathematics in the thematic ranking.
Unveiled on Saturday and available here, this ranking honors a total of 30 French establishments. Among which five of them are in the Top 100: Paris-Saclay (14th), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (36th), Sorbonne University (39th), University of Paris (65th) and Université Grenoble Alpes (99th). France therefore ranks third in the world behind the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Minister proud of her "new university models"
With the exception of Sorbonne University, these schools all have a new status of experimental establishment. What did not fail to underline the Ministry of Higher Education and Research when commenting on this Shanghai ranking. "These new university models are proving their relevance and are now recognized abroad, testifying to the quality of our teaching and our research at the international level", welcomed Minister Frédérique Vidal on Saturday in a press release. .
What are these “new models” based on? The ministry describes a “decompartmentalization” between “universities, grandes écoles and research organizations” allowing establishments “to deploy their strategy within an organization whose model they have chosen”. Paris-Saclay is the perfect example. By 2025, there must be total merger between Paris region research (École normale supérieure, CentraleSupélec, AgroParisTech, etc.) and the universities of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and Evry.
Shanghai ranking remains criticized
These restructurings undeniably weigh on international attractiveness. And in particular on the positioning in the ranking of Shanghai, whose podium remains held by the Harvard-Stanford-Cambridge trio. The criteria are essentially quantitative, which is regretted by part of the scientific world. Thus, the more the structure is bloated, the more we maximize the chances of appearing well. We count the number of Nobel and Fields medals among graduate students and professors, the number of researchers most cited in their discipline, or the number of publications in the journals Science and Nature.
Conversely, the educational qualities of an institution or even the chances of its students of finding a job after having graduated are not evaluated here. In addition, the hard sciences are highly valued there, to the chagrin of centers specializing in the human sciences.
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In 2018, a teacher-researcher from ENS Paris-Saclay was already worried that this quest for the best international “rankings” would come at the expense of the general level of education. “The risk is that Paris-Saclay is only great in numbers, but not in the spirit of the university. We fear that in order to reach the level of the world rankings, the cycles of license and IUT will be put aside. "
Paris-Saclay University in figures
Paris-Saclay University, created on January 1, 2020, is:
- 48,000 students
- 9,000 researchers and teacher-researchers
- 14 campuses spread over 4 departments of Ile-de-France (Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Val-de-Marne and Yvelines)
- Nearly 300 research laboratories, including 9 mathematics laboratories, associated with national research organizations.