Top 500 World Universities

The latest edition of Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Top 500 World Universities has now been published:

Academic Ranking of World Universities -- 2005

Harvard is still top, but Cambridge jumps to second above Stanford. Education Guardian comments:

Cambridge climbs to second in world university rankings
Donald MacLeod

American institutions, both public and private, dominate the list but this year Stanford has ceded second place to Cambridge. Oxford has dropped from eighth to 10th in the table which its compilers admit favours science. The number of Nobel prize winners among alumni and on the staff count towards 30% of the ranking and Cambridge alumni almost equals Harvard's in this respect . . . .

. . . . UK university continue to perform well against the European competition - Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and University College London take the top four places in Europe, with Edinburgh in ninth position. Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, King's College London and Nottingham are all in the top 30 universities in Europe.

But of course we are all going to use this list to see where our universities figure, those where we studied and those where we work. It's difficult to resist the urge to look. Oxford, where I studied, is still in the top 10, just. Birmingham, where I work, just makes the Top 100, coming in at 98, dropping five places from last year (see last year's comment here), but that's still pretty respectable. Duke, where I am moving in September, is at 32.

Update (9.46): In comments Ken Olson notes that things are a little different for the American universities in the US News and World Report rankings. See America's Best Colleges 2005. Harvard and Princeton tie at the top, Yale at 3, UPenn 4 and Duke, MIT and Stanford tied at 5.