Five Finnish universities rank among best 500 in the world

Last year six Finnish educational institutes made it to list published by Chinese university

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Five Finnish educational institutes made it to list of world's top 500 universities published by a Chinese university this year. The list, compiled by the Jiao Tong University of Shanghai, ranks universities mainly based on academic and research performance.
      Last year, when the list was published for the first time, six universities from Finland were included. This year only five Finnish universities were ranked among the finest 500 in the world, when the University of Kuopio did not make it.
     
The University of Helsinki slightly improved its position from last year and is now ranked 72nd, just above Uppsala in Sweden.
      Other Finnish institutes of higher education that made it to the list are the University of Turku, Helsinki University of Technology, the University of Jyväskylä, and the University of Oulu.
      Ten Swedish universities also feature in the list, led by Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, which was ranked at number 46.
      Five universities from Denmark and four from Norway were also included.
      The Universities of Copenhagen and Oslo ranked at 59 and 68 respectively.
      As expected, famous American universities such as Harvard and Stanford dominated the very top of the list. The American clean sweep in the top twelve was foiled by the British universities of Cambridge and Oxford, which were recognised as the third and the eighth best in the world.
     
The Chairman of the Nordic University Association, Rector of Åbo Akademi University Gustav Björkstrand, sees such ranking lists as questionable in many ways, but admits they reflect the institutes' international success.
      Björkstrand finds it regrettable that one Finnish university fell off the list this year. "The universities themselves as well as the state authorities carry the responsibility to change the direction of this development."
      Björkstrand also frets that discussion in Finland only focuses on improving regional interaction of universities, as opposed to improving their international competitiveness.
      "Failure to achieve international recognition is destructive to the whole country, and cannot be justified by creating a few jobs in some underdeveloped region", Björkstrand points out.
      Björkstrand calls for sufficiently large, multidisciplinary universities as well as specialised research functions. "Even painful measures may be required, but I believe it's the only way for us", says Björkstrand.
     
The Jiao Tong University of Shanghai ranks universities by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, and academic performance with respect to the size of an institution.
      The plan is to carry on publishing an updated list every year.


Links:
  Academic Ranking of World Universities - 2004

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