Universities
Science is a key factor of the development of societies and economies. Universities are among the main institutions involved in the development of science, especially basic research. For this reason below is presented ranking of the best universities in the world and a list of countries in which they are located.
Thanks to transparent methodology and globally sound one of the most popular ranking of universities is the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The ranking classifies more than 1000 universities every year and the list of the best 500 are published on the web.
First ranking was published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities and the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and then updated on an annual basis. Starting from 2009, the ARWU has been published by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy.
ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance with respect to the size of an institution. For each indicator, the highest scored institution is assigned a score of 100, and other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score.
Details of Ranking criteria and weights are in the table below.
List of top 20 universities in the world in 2010 is as follows.
| University | COUNTRY | ARWU Rank | Total score |
| Harvard University | United States | 1 | 100.00 |
| University of California, Berkeley | United States | 2 | 72.4 |
| Stanford University | United States | 3 | 72.1 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States | 4 | 71.4 |
| University of Cambridge | United Kingdom | 5 | 69.6 |
| California Institute of Technology | United States | 6 | 64.4 |
| Princeton University | United States | 7 | 60.8 |
| Columbia University | United States | 8 | 60.4 |
| University of Chicago | United States | 9 | 57.3 |
| University of Oxford | United Kingdom | 10 | 56.4 |
| Yale University | United States | 11 | 54.6 |
| Cornell University | United States | 12 | 52.6 |
| University of California, Los Angeles | United States | 13 | 52.2 |
| University of California, San Diego | United States | 14 | 50.0 |
| University of Pennsylvania | United States | 15 | 49.0 |
| University of Washington | United States | 16 | 48.7 |
| University of Wisconsin – Madison | United States | 17 | 46.4 |
| The Johns Hopkins University | United States | 18 | 46.0 |
| University of California, San Francisco | United States | 19 | 46.0 |
| The University of Tokyo | Japan | 20 | 45.9 |
Source: http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp
In the following list you can compare countries with the highest GDP and the largest number of universities in the ARWU ranking.*
| COUNTRY | GDP Rank | ARWU Rank | Top 100 | Top 500 |
| United States | 1 | 1 | 54 | 154 |
| China | 2 | 17 | - | 34 |
| Japan | 3 | 3 | 5 | 25 |
| Germany | 4 | 4 | 5 | 39 |
| France | 5 | 6 | 3 | 22 |
| United Kingdom | 6 | 2 | 11 | 38 |
| Brazil | 7 | 21 | - | 6 |
| Italy | 8 | 18 | - | 22 |
| Canada | 9 | 5 | 4 | 23 |
| India | 10 | 33 | - | 2 |
| Russia | 11 | 16 | 1 | 2 |
| Spain | 12 | 25 | - | 10 |
| Australia | 13 | 7 | 3 | 17 |
| Mexico | 14 | 24 | - | 1 |
| South Korea | 15 | 19 | - | 10 |
| Netherlands | 16 | 10 | 2 | 12 |
| Turkey | 17 | 39 | - | 1 |
| Indonesia | 18 | - | - | - |
| Switzerland | 19 | 8 | 3 | 7 |
| Poland | 20 | 32 | - | 2 |
Source: http://www.arwu.org/ARWUStatistics2010.jsp
*Ranking takes into account the total number of universities and their place in the ranking.
