The results, announced on August 15, were eagerly awaited. As every year, the latest growth in the Shanghai ranking, which since 2003 has been making its list of the best institutions of higher education in the world, is widely commented on in the media. So many analyzes scrutinized by a good number of families, counting in their close circle teenagers or young people who dream of joining the great Anglo-Saxon universities – invariably in the lead – or who are interested in the best ranked French establishments, such as the Paris-Saclay University, in the running for a few years now. And it is not the only tricolor entity to appear in the Chinese ranking. “With the presence of 27 French establishments, this 2023 list once again highlights the investment of French researchers and teacher-researchers internationally”, welcomed the Ministry of Higher Education and Research last Tuesday. While President Emmanuel Macron was delighted to see “French excellence in the spotlight”.
Paris-Saclay University, which has been in the top 20 since 2020, retains its rank as the leading French university with a 15th place worldwide. The University of Paris Cité moved up ten places and reached 68th place in the world, while the University of Paris Sciences Lettres and the Sorbonne University occupied 41st and 46th place respectively. In total, France therefore retains four establishments among the 100 best in the world.
Internationally, the American University Harvard dominates the list for the 21st time, followed by Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), then the University of Cambridge. This will not fail to interest more and more high school and university students who want to turn to studies abroad. “The French love rankings like the Shanghai Rankings, but also the QS World University Rankings or the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Unfortunately, the information relayed is not always well interpreted”, warns Marc McHugo, head of the company. of Study Experience advice.
Many voices are raised against the “biases” of these rankings
For this specialist, the importance given to rankings would be disproportionate and would mislead many young people. Before focusing on the rank obtained by the university of your dreams, it is better to know the evaluation criteria on which these tables are based. The Shanghai ranking, essentially centered on the quality of research, focuses among other things on the number of Fields medals and Nobel prizes won, but also on the number and quality of articles published in prestigious scientific journals. “Some will tell you that these criteria are simplistic, but they at least have the merit of being objective and the quality of its research often goes hand in hand with the quality of an establishment”, analyzes Olivier Rollot, editor-in-chief of the site L’ Essential of the Sup, for whom this tool is interesting to take into account, even if it should not be the only one. In recent years, many voices have been raised against the “biases” of these rankings, which do not take into account other very important criteria such as the evaluation of various other disciplines, the quality of general education or the prospects for Career opportunities.
“The Shanghai ranking is reliable for a future student who likes the so-called ‘hard’ sciences, who wishes to do a thesis with good supervisors and state-of-the-art equipment”, summarizes Thierry Côme, professor of management sciences at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University (and co-author with Gilles Rouet of University rankings, CNRS editions). “In the other cases, it does not give sufficiently objective elements to help make its choice since it does not integrate student living conditions, pedagogy, employability”, continues the academic. “We must be delighted with these results,” said Sylvie Retailleau, Minister of Higher Education and Research, on France Inter on August 16, before adding that this Shanghai ranking should not be “the alpha and omega”. “Like any ranking, you have to know the criteria, not make him say more than he says,” said the former president of the University of Paris-Saclay.
Another pitfall regularly put forward by all those who denounce the “dictatorship of rankings”: the more establishments group together to reach a certain size allowing them to be more visible, the more the new entities created are likely to weigh in these rankings. A strategy led by Paris-Saclay which, on January 1, 2020, officially brought together the Paris-Sud University, but also several large schools and public research organizations. This new mastodon, which alone represents 13% of French research potential, is thus perfectly formatted to meet the criteria of the Shanghai ranking. Does this mean that the “smallest” institutions, even successful ones, have no chance of appearing there? “The size effect can indeed play a role, but it would be wrong to say that it conditions everything. professors or their Nobel Prizes and Fields medalists”, puts Olivier Rollot into perspective.
It remains to be seen who can claim to join the prestigious universities, most often extremely selective, put forward by Shanghai. “This ranking is especially interesting for students, already well advanced in the system, who are wondering about the training they are about to follow in master’s, doctorate and beyond”, continues Olivier Rollot who insists on the fact that the establishments of excellence occupying the top of the rankings appear as “niches” reserved for a very small minority of students in the world. For post-baccalaureate students, they often turn out to be unattainable, and sometimes even look like mirrors to the larks. “When you’re 17 and embarking on a first university cycle, you don’t necessarily need to integrate an environment that shines with its research. It’s important to take into account what you want do exactly,” insists Marc McHugo. And the specialist warns: the very few elected officials who succeed in integrating a university as prestigious as Harvard sometimes note with regret that their teachers are not necessarily Nobel Prize winners or great researchers but rather their research assistants. However, “having a global brand on your CV can be a plus, promoting international mobility”, recognizes for his part Thierry Côme. A significant asset at a time of globalization of higher education.