Ten Polish universities among world’s top 1000 in new international ranking

Ten Polish universities have been rated as among the best 1,000 in the world in the new edition of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). That is two more than made the list last year.

The Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland’s oldest institute of higher education, and the University of Warsaw were the best rated Polish universities. Both were ranked in the band between 401 and 500 (for universities below the top 100, exact positions are not given).

For the University of Warsaw, that marks a fall from the 301-400 band that it was in last year, when it temporarily overtook the Jagiellonian University as Poland’s best. Poland’s own domestic university ranking, compiled by Perskektywy magazine, currently places the Kraków institution in first place.

A further eight Polish universities made the top 1,000 in the ARWU list, with their rankings as follows:

1. Jagiellonian University (401-500)
2. University of Warsaw (401-500)
3. AGH University of Science and Technology (701-800)
4. Medical University of Warsaw (701-800)
5. Gdańsk University of Technology (801-900)
6. Warsaw University of Life Sciences (801-900)
7. Wrocław Medical University (801-900)
8. Adam Mickiewicz University (901-1000)
9. Warsaw University of Technology (901-1000)
10. Wrocław University of Science and Technology (901-1000)

ARWU, widely referred to as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the three major international university rankings, alongside the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World University Ranking.

This year, Harvard University topped the ARWU, as it has every year since the ranking began in 2003. Like last year, it was followed by Stanford University and the University of Cambridge.

Very few universities from Central and Eastern Europe find themselves in the upper reaches of the list. The only ones above the Jagiellonian University and University of Warsaw are Moscow State University in 93rd, Prague’s Charles University in 201-300 and Saint Petersburg State University in 301-400.

In the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings, published last September, Poland’s top universities performed slightly worse than in the ARWU, with both the Jagiellonian and the University of Warsaw ranked in the 601-800 bracket.

The QS World University Ranking’s methodology has historically been most positive about Polish institutions. The University of Warsaw (joint 321st) and the Jagiellonian University (joint 326th) both find themselves in QS’s current top 350. A further 15 Polish colleges – up from 13 last year – are in the top 1,000.

Other Polish schools to feature in the QS ranking included AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków and the Medical University of Warsaw, both in the 801-900 band, with the latter promoted from the 901-1000 band in 2020.

Main image credit: Monika/Flickr (under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.