Despite slips in world rankings, Pitt high on list

A Chinese organization’s list of the world’s top 500 universities claims that Pitt’s position among the world’s universities has declined slightly over the last few years.

The Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China, put Pitt in the top 100 universities in the world when it released its annual Academic Ranking of World Universities earlier this month. Although Pitt has fallen in the rankings over the last few years, in many specialized areas, especially medicine, it has remained strong. Universities in the U.S. and other Western countries continue to dominate the list.

Pitt appeared 61st in the institutional rankings for 2013, down a few spots from 58th in 2012 and 57th in 2011. In 2003, the first year the center published these rankings, Pitt was ranked 53rd. Pitt’s best showing in the Chinese center’s rankings was in 2005 when it ranked 43rd.

Pitt spokesman John Fedele declined to comment because he and other administrators did not have time to review the methodology of the rankings before time of publication.

The list also ranks global universities in specialized fields.

In the category of natural sciences and mathematics, Pitt was ranked between 101st and 150th both last year and this year. Above the 50th ranking, the center only lists the range of positions to which universities belong. In engineering/technology and computer sciences, Pitt also placed in the range between 101st and 150th. In the categories of life and agricultural sciences, Pitt placed 45th this year and 44th last year. 

Meanwhile in the social sciences, Pitt’s position improved from 48th last year to 46th this year.

In the field of clinical medicine and pharmacy, Pitt’s position has remained steady at 10th on the list both this year and last.

The center’s system of evaluation looks at the amount of prestige an institution’s researchers and alumni generate on the international stage.

For instance, the rankings are partly based on the number of alumni and faculty members of an institution who receive top international awards. For most fields, this means the number of Nobel Prizes they receive. In mathematics, it’s how many alumni or faculty members receive the Fields Medal, a prestigious international award for mathematicians.

Other measures the center uses to evaluate schools include the number of researchers from each institution who are among the most often cited in their fields, the amount of money spent on engineering research at each institution and the proportion of academic papers from faculty at each institution that appear in top journals.

A majority of the top-ranked universities were in the U.S., which had 52 in the top 100 and a total of 149 on the list. Nine of the top 100 were U.K. universities, which accounted for a total of 37 in the top 500.

Universities in other areas of the world did not fare so well.

Japan was the only East Asian country to have any schools in the top 100, with three. 

A total of 20 Japanese universities placed in the list of the top 500. Although researchers at a Chinese university compiled the rankings, only 28 universities in the People’s Republic of China, nine in Taiwan and five in Hong Kong appeared in the top 500. Only one Indian university made the top 500.

No South American or African universities appeared in the top 100, although some did appear in the list of 500, including six Brazilian and three South African schools.