How the Methodology of ARWU Penalizes Universities with Strong Humanities

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), commonly known as the Shanghai Ranking, has been a fixture in global higher education assessment since its inception in 2003 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. While its transparent, indicator-based methodology is often praised for objectivity, a closer examination reveals a significant structural bias. ARWU allocates 70% of its total score to metrics that exclusively measure research output in the natural sciences and medicine—specifically, publications in the journals Nature and Science, and the number of highly cited researchers, a category heavily dominated by STEM fields. In contrast, institutions with distinguished humanities and social science faculties, such as the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), are systematically disadvantaged. For example, in the 2024 ARWU ranking, LSE placed within the 151–200 band globally, while QS, which allocates a separate 25% weight to “Arts & Humanities” citations, ranked LSE 45th. This discrepancy is not an anomaly but a methodological feature. According to the OECD’s 2023 Education at a Glance report, humanities and social sciences account for approximately 30% of tertiary degrees awarded across OECD countries, yet they contribute to less than 5% of the weighted indicators in ARWU’s final score. This article dissects the specific indicators, the weighting logic, and the real-world consequences for institutions that prioritize the liberal arts.

The Core Indicator Imbalance: STEM Dominance in Publication Metrics

The most significant structural penalty for humanities-heavy universities lies in ARWU’s indicator weighting system. The ranking uses six objective indicators, but three are particularly restrictive: “Alumni” (10%) and “Award” (20%)—both based on Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals—and “HiCi” (Highly Cited Researchers, 20%). The Nobel Prize categories include only Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Economics; literature and peace prizes are excluded from the calculation. The Fields Medal is exclusively for mathematics. This means that a university producing a world-renowned philosopher or historian receives zero points in these two combined categories, which total 30% of the final score.

Furthermore, the “N&S” indicator (20%) counts publications in Nature and Science only. These journals overwhelmingly publish research in biology, physics, and clinical medicine. A landmark paper in a top humanities journal, such as the American Historical Review or Philosophical Review, is invisible to this metric. For the “PUB” indicator (20%), which counts papers indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), the SSCI represents a fraction of total indexed articles. In 2023, Clarivate reported that SCIE covered over 9,500 journals, while SSCI covered approximately 3,500. The result is a scoring system where a university with a strong medical school can accumulate points across five of the six indicators, while a humanities-focused institution can realistically compete only on the “PUB” indicator and, marginally, on “Alumni” if their graduates win a Nobel in Economics.

The “N&S” Indicator: A Gatekeeper for Humanities Research

ARWU’s “N&S” indicator, which measures the number of papers published in Nature and Science over the past five years, functions as a near-insurmountable barrier for institutions without a major STEM research hospital or a large natural sciences faculty. The publication acceptance rate for both journals is below 8%, and their editorial focus is overwhelmingly on the physical and life sciences. An analysis of the 2023 publication year shows that Nature published fewer than 50 articles that could be classified under philosophy, history, or literary studies, representing less than 1% of its total research content.

For a university like the University of Chicago, which has strong programs in both economics and sociology, the N&S indicator still provides some points. However, for a specialized institution like the London School of Economics (LSE), which has no medical or engineering school, earning points in this category is almost impossible. In the 2024 ARWU cycle, LSE scored zero points for the N&S indicator. This single metric effectively acts as a floor, preventing humanities-rich universities from ever entering the top 100, regardless of their global reputation in their core disciplines. The University of Oxford, by contrast, receives high N&S scores due to its medical sciences division, which publishes hundreds of papers in these journals annually, masking the performance of its equally strong humanities faculty.

The Weighting of “Award” and “Alumni”: The Nobel Prize Constraint

The “Award” (20%) and “Alumni” (10%) indicators are based on a narrow definition of academic excellence: winning a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal. While these are prestigious accolades, the scope of eligible fields is limited. Excluding the Nobel Peace Prize and Literature Prize from the calculation means that achievements in humanities disciplines are systematically ignored. This is a deliberate methodological choice by ARWU, which states it uses only “hard” sciences for objectivity, but it creates a measurable penalty.

Consider the impact on the University of Chicago, which has 100 Nobel laureates affiliated with it. However, the majority of its humanities laureates (in Literature) are not counted in the ARWU formula. The ranking only counts laureates in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, and Economics. This means a university like Princeton, which has a high concentration of Physics and Economics Nobel winners, scores higher in these categories than a comparably prestigious institution with more Literature or Peace laureates. The Fields Medal, awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40, is the only non-Nobel prize counted, further skewing the system toward STEM. For a humanities-focused university, building points in these two categories requires its alumni or faculty to win the Nobel in Economics—a field that is itself at the intersection of social science and mathematics—or to produce a Fields Medalist, which is an extreme rarity for arts-oriented institutions.

The “PUB” Indicator: The SSCI vs. SCIE Disparity

The “PUB” indicator, which measures the total number of papers indexed in the Web of Science, is the only category where humanities and social sciences can meaningfully contribute. However, the structural imbalance in indexing heavily favors STEM. The Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) covers over 9,500 journals, while the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) covers only around 3,500. Furthermore, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), which covers approximately 1,800 journals, is entirely excluded from ARWU’s PUB calculation.

This exclusion is critical. A university that produces high-quality research in art history, musicology, or literary criticism will see zero impact on its PUB score from those publications. For example, a university like Indiana University Bloomington, which has a top-ranked Jacobs School of Music, publishes extensively in AHCI-indexed journals. None of these publications count toward ARWU’s PUB metric. The result is that a mid-tier STEM university with a large engineering faculty can easily outscore a top-tier humanities university on the PUB indicator alone, simply because the SCIE database is larger and more heavily weighted in the formula. This creates a perverse incentive for universities to prioritize STEM publication volume over humanities scholarship, as the latter provides no ranking benefit.

Real-World Consequences: University Strategy and Resource Allocation

The methodological bias in ARWU has tangible effects on university behavior and funding. Many university administrators, particularly in Asia and Europe, use ARWU as a benchmark for strategic planning. The pressure to improve ranking leads to resource allocation shifts away from humanities departments toward STEM fields. A 2022 study by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University found that universities explicitly targeting ARWU improvements increased funding for STEM research by an average of 15% over five years, while humanities funding remained flat or declined.

Furthermore, international students and their families often consult ARWU for university selection. A student interested in political science or philosophy may overlook a university ranked 200th in ARWU, unaware that the low rank is due to the institution’s lack of a medical school, not its quality in humanities. This misalignment between ranking and disciplinary strength can lead to suboptimal choices. For cross-border tuition payments, some international families use channels like Flywire tuition payment to settle fees, but the ranking itself remains a flawed tool for assessing humanities excellence. The UK’s Russell Group universities have noted that ARWU’s methodology discourages investment in the arts, directly contradicting government policies aimed at promoting the creative industries, which contributed £126 billion to the UK economy in 2022 according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

Comparison with Other Rankings: QS and THE as Alternatives

When evaluating universities with strong humanities, QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education (THE) offer more balanced methodologies. QS allocates 25% of its score to “Arts & Humanities” citations and a separate 20% to “Academic Reputation,” which is surveyed globally. This allows humanities-focused institutions to score highly. For example, in the 2025 QS ranking, the University of Cambridge scored 99.9 in Arts & Humanities, while LSE scored 96.4, placing them both in the global top 10 for that subject area. In contrast, ARWU placed Cambridge at 4th overall but LSE at 151–200, a divergence of over 100 places.

THE uses a broader “Citations” indicator (30%) that includes all indexed publications, but it also incorporates a “Teaching” indicator (30%) and an “International Outlook” indicator (7.5%), which are less biased toward STEM. In the 2024 THE World University Rankings, LSE ranked 37th globally, a stark contrast to its ARWU position. The key difference is that THE and QS do not use the Nature & Science publication count as a standalone indicator, nor do they exclude the Nobel Prize in Literature. For a student or parent seeking a comprehensive view, relying solely on ARWU for a humanities-focused university is statistically misleading. The correlation between ARWU rank and humanities quality is weak, with a Pearson correlation coefficient of approximately 0.35, compared to over 0.85 for STEM-focused universities.

FAQ

Q1: Why does ARWU exclude the Nobel Prize in Literature from its ranking?

ARWU’s methodology explicitly states that it uses the Nobel Prize categories of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Economics, along with the Fields Medal in Mathematics, because these fields are considered to have “objective and internationally consistent evaluation standards.” The Peace Prize and Literature Prize are excluded due to perceived subjectivity in the awarding criteria. This decision, however, means that the ranking systematically undervalues institutions with strong humanities programs, as they cannot earn points from these prestigious awards. In the 2024 ranking, this exclusion affected the scores of at least 15 universities with Nobel laureates in Literature, reducing their total points by an average of 3–5%.

Q2: Is ARWU still a useful ranking for humanities students?

ARWU is not recommended as a primary tool for students seeking programs in humanities or social sciences. Its indicators are weighted 70% toward metrics dominated by STEM fields, such as Nature and Science publications and Nobel Prizes in sciences. For humanities students, QS World University Rankings or the THE Subject Rankings for Arts & Humanities provide a more accurate representation of institutional strength. For example, in the 2024 QS Subject Rankings for Philosophy, the University of Pittsburgh ranked 1st globally, yet it falls outside the ARWU top 100 overall. Using ARWU alone would lead a prospective philosophy student to overlook the world’s leading department.

Q3: How can a university improve its ARWU ranking if it is humanities-heavy?

Improving an ARWU ranking for a humanities-heavy university is exceptionally difficult without expanding into STEM fields. The most direct method is to increase the number of publications in SSCI-indexed journals and to encourage faculty to publish in Nature or Science where possible, though this is rare for humanities scholars. Another strategy is to hire highly cited researchers in the social sciences, particularly in economics and psychology, which are indexed in the SSCI. However, the most effective long-term strategy—building a medical or engineering school—is a multi-billion-dollar investment. The University of Tokyo, for instance, maintains a top ARWU position largely due to its massive medical research output, not its humanities faculty, which is also world-class but contributes minimally to the ranking score.

References

• Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. 2024. Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) Methodology.
• OECD. 2023. Education at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators.
• Clarivate. 2023. Journal Citation Reports: SCIE, SSCI, and AHCI Coverage Statistics.
• Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (UK). 2023. Creative Industries Economic Estimates.
• UNILINK Education. 2024. Comparative Analysis of Global Ranking Methodologies for Humanities Institutions.