France is holding on.
With Harvard in first place for the 19th consecutive year, American universities still lead the 2021 edition of the Shanghai ranking published on Sunday, where four French institutions remain in the top 100.
“France is once again shining in the Shanghai ranking, a marker of its scientific excellence and the success of our research policy!
“, Welcomed the Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, on Twitter.
Since 2017, our universities have recorded spectacular progress.
Reinvestment in research, regrouping of universities, interweaving of higher education and research, ... The models that we have initiated are bearing fruit.
#ShanghaiRanking pic.twitter.com/jFMApcYZ9D
- Frédérique Vidal (@VidalFrederique) August 15, 2021
The first non-Anglo-Saxon establishment with its 13th place, the University of Paris-Saclay gains one place compared to the 2020 ranking, in which it made its very first appearance. "This ranking is not an end in itself but it allows us to take a new look at French higher education, and it is thus a lever for attracting new talents, highlighting our academic teams", explained Sunday Sylvie Retailleau, president of Paris-Saclay, in a press release.
It is in particular to guarantee international appeal that Paris-Saclay was born from the merger of several establishments, such as ENS Paris-Saclay, AgroParisTech, or CentraleSupélec.
By 2025, there must be total convergence between research at Paris-Saclay, and the universities of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and Evry.
Several other universities are following the same path, such as the University of Lille currently, and the process is not always unanimous.
Anglo-Saxon domination
The first ten places are like last year dominated by the Anglo-Saxons with eight American universities and two British occupying the top 10 of this world ranking of the best higher education establishments carried out since 2003 by the independent firm Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. In first place, Harvard is once again ahead of its compatriot Stanford and Britain's Cambridge. Then we find the American Massachussets Institute of Technology (4th), Berkeley (5th) and Princeton (6th) then the British Oxford (7th), an unchanged order since 2017.
In addition to Paris-Saclay, three other French universities are among the top 100 in the world: the PSL University (Paris Science et Lettres), which brings together several higher education establishments including the Ecole normale supérieure (ENS), at 38th rank, the Sorbonne ( 35th) and the University of Paris (73rd).
The Shanghai ranking takes into account six criteria, including the number of Nobel and Fields medals - considered the Nobel in mathematics - among graduate students and professors, the number of top-cited researchers in their discipline or the number of publications in Science and Nature journals.
These criteria are however often criticized, for their biased character in favor of American universities in particular.