Kent a Top 500 world university

For the first time in the history of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the University of Kent has entered the top 500, rising by over 100 places from the previous year.

Over the summer, the (ARWU) released their 15th annual list of the top 500 international universities.

UKC has now joined only 39 other UK universities to have entered the top 500.

The ARWU is a ranking system that was set up in 2003 to originally track the proficiency of Chinese universities but was later extended to all universities across the globe.

The methodology that the organisation uses to rank universities is widely believed to be among the most realistic portrayals of university academic output.

The ARWU measures and ranks universities in the world based on several main indicators, the number of alumni to have obtained a Nobel Prize or Fields Medal, the number of highly cited researchers selected by analysis tools, the number of articles published in national or internationally known journals and the per-capita performance of the university.

There may be several reasons contributing to the meteoric rise of the University of Kent in the rankings, including the recent awarding of a Nobel Prize in Literature to Kazuo Ishiguro, an English and Philosophy alumni— who was later knighted in the Queen’s 2018 birthday honours list.

Other reasons believed to have contributed also include a slight but steady rise in citations among staff across the various faculties in recent years, as well as a rise in published articles to reputable journals.