The University of Lisbon (ULisboa) is among the 250 best universities in the world, according to data from the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2014from Shanghai Jiaotong University in China, recently released.
The ARWU is considered the most prestigious and recognized ranking in the world, which selects more than 1,200 higher education institutions and publishes the 500 best universities in the world. This year, ULisboa's position in the ranking has risen more than a hundred places, and it is now in the top 201-300. With regard to the evaluation by major areas of knowledge, ULisboa appears in the group of 76-100 best in the area of Engineering/Technology and Computer Science.
The Rector of ULisboa, Professor António Cruz Serra, considers that ULisboa "has a very honorable position this year in the Shanghai ranking, which is the main and most recognized ranking of international universities, with a Portuguese university appearing for the first time in position 200 worldwide", adding that ULisboa is among the 80 best in Europe. ULisboa's "excellent result" in ARWU 2014 is, according to the Rector of ULisboa, essentially related to "the aggregation of all the scientific work and performance of the university as a whole which, for the first time, is evaluated taking into account the merger of the two institutions that gave rise to it: the former University of Lisbon and the Technical University of Lisbon".
Only two other Portuguese universities are also included in the 2014 edition of the ARWU, namely the University of Porto (in the 301-400 group) and the University of Coimbra (in the 401-500 range). US universities Harvard and Stanford continue to occupy the top two places in the ranking, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Shanghai ranking is based on four criteria: quality of education (students who have won Nobel prizes or Fields medals), quality of the institution (professors and researchers with Nobel prizes or Fields medals and highly cited researchers), research results (articles published in Nature and Science magazines and cited articles) and size (academic performance ratio).
