French universities get bad marks in Shanghai rankings

Only four French universities have been classed in the Top 100 of the “Shanghai 2013,” which ranks international universities each year. France’s Education Minister Géneviève Fioraso says the research-based rankings favour Anglo-Saxon schools. 

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The French universities who made top marks were Paris VI (37th), Paris XI (39th), L’Ecole normale supérieur (71st) and the University of Strasbourg (97th). L’Ecole Polytechnique came in at 211th.

France’s universities were once again bumped out of the top spots by British schools, but US universities were the ones who made an impressive showing, claiming 17 out of the first 20 places.

Harvard and Stanford picked up highest honours, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was bumped out of the third spot by Berkeley. The United Kingdom’s Cambridge came in as the first non-American school, claiming the 5th spot.

For France’s education minister, though, the rankings are biased, and only reflect certain aspects of education – those hinged on an Anglo-Saxon model of research-based learning. In France, research institutions in the social sciences, like the CNRS and Inserm, are separate from universities and, though they in themselves are internationally ranked, they could not be included on the Shanghai list.

Schools are also ranked based on the number of Nobel prizes attributed to its former students or researchers, how many Fields medals it has received, as well as how often its students are published in revues – often Anglo-Saxon publications.

“The criteria used are much more adapted to Anglo-Saxon universities than to European universities,” Education Minister Géneviève Fioraso said, in response to the results. “The attractiveness of higher education and research can’t be judged based on the sole standard of Anglo-Saxon education.”

All the more reason France is defending a new European model, the “U-Multirank, which will publish its first rankings in the spring. There, France’s prized grandes écoles and engineering schools could be recognised for their educational contributions.