Discover why Belgian universities maintain global acclaim, even as US institutions dominate the rankings;
✔ UGent remains the top-ranking Belgian university for the 14th consecutive year
✔ Eight US institutions, alongside Cambridge and Oxford, hold the prestigious top 10 positions
✔ Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) struggles to break into the top 100
Two Belgian universities have retained their position in the top 100 of the Shanghai ranking of the world's best universities, which continues to be dominated by US higher-education institutions.
For the 22nd year running, American universities have dominated the upper reaches of the 'Academic Ranking of World Universities' (ARWU), which is compiled annually by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an independent organisation focusing on higher education.
More than 2,500 research institutions around the world were analysed for the ranking, which is based on research rather than education (sometimes leading to criticism of the list). Two Belgian universities, the University of Ghent (UGent) and KULeuven, have both kept their place in the top 100.
UGent, which in 2010 was the first Belgian university to enter the top 100, dropped to 83rd place after being placed 74th in 2022. However it remains the top-ranking Belgian university for the 14th consecutive year.
"As in previous years, Ghent University owes its position mainly to its large number of scientific publications. The presence of scientists who are very often cited by others and the number of publications in the top journals Nature and Science also contribute to this," the university noted in a statement.
Tweet translation: "UGent remains the first Belgian university in the Academic Ranking of World Universities."
This year, KU Leuven follows the Ghent-based university closely, in 85th place. Last year it dropped to 95th. French-speaking Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) has consistently ranked between 101st and 150th place but struggles to break into the top 100.
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Eight universities in the top ten are in the United States: Harvard, Stanford (2), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3), Berkeley (5), Princeton (6), Columbia (8), CalTech (9) and Chicago (10) have also retained their position in the lead.
The English universities of Cambridge (4) and Oxford (7) complete the top 10. Université Paris-Saclay is the first non-anglophone university in 15th place.
Among the six criteria used by Shanghai are the number of Nobel Prize winners based at the university, the number of most-cited scientists in their discipline and the number of publications in the scientific journals Science and Nature.
