World Class Universities as a Measure of System Quality

This a list of the percentage of each country's universities that are included in the top 500 of the Academic Ranking of World Universities produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It might be considered a limited indicator of the overall quality of a country's higher education system.

The number of universities in each country included in the ARWU Top 500 is from ARWU . The total number of universities in each country is from Webometrics. A university is simply defined by the possession of a distinct URL.

It is of course easier to start a university in the US than in Israel where the country's first Arabic speaking university has only just been approved. However, this table does put the large number of American universities in global rankings in a different perspective.


1. Israel 21.21
2. Sweden 20.37
3. Australia 19.77
4. UK 16.17
5= Finland 11.76
5= Singapore 11.76
7. South Africa 11.54
8. Canada 11.33
9. New Zealand 11.11
10. Italy 10.89
11. Austria 10.61
12. Germany 9.75
13. Netherlands 8.21
14. Belgium 7.14
15. Switzerland 6.67
16. Ireland 6.00
17. Norway 5.89
18. USA 4.70
19. Spain 4.59
20. Saudi Arabia 4.44
21. Hungary 3.85
22. France 3.77
23. Denmark 3.57
24. Japan 3.50
25= Greece 3.125
25= Slovenia 3.125
27. South Korea 2.55
28. China 2.52
29. Chile 2.47
30. Portugal 1.79
31. Czech Republic 1.75
32. Argentina 0.95
33. Turkey 0.67
34. Poland 0.46
35. Brazil 0.40
36. Russia 0.30
37. Iran 0.19
38. India 0.13
39. Mexico 0.11