Dental school again ranked No. 1 in the world
June 30, 2020
Ann Arbor, Mich. - The University of Michigan School of Dentistry is again rated as the top dental school in the world by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an international organization that annually rates universities and their programs.
The U-M dental school is ranked as No. 1 in Dentistry and Oral Sciences in Shanghai’s 2020 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects released Monday.
The ranking measures research quality, extent of international collaboration, amount of research published in top journals, and the number of significant academic awards faculty receive from professional organizations.
The survey ranks 54 subjects within five categories: Medical Sciences, which includes Dentistry and Oral Sciences; Natural Sciences; Engineering; Life Sciences; and Social Sciences. Data from more than 4,000 universities was examined, with the final report including 1,800 universities from 90 countries and regions.
“This ranking reflects directly on our outstanding faculty, researchers and students,” said Dean Laurie McCauley. “Dating back to its founding in 1875, our school has always understood that scientific research is the foundation of dentistry, dental education and patient care. Our research explores many important areas related to oral health, from regenerative medicine to head and neck cancer to emerging applications of genome editing in oral and craniofacial biology. It is gratifying to see the importance of our researchers’ work acknowledged in this latest international ranking.”
The academic subject ranking released Monday by Shanghai Ranking is part of the organization’s larger university rating system known as the Academic Ranking of World Universities, or ARWU. The overall university rating is not yet released for 2020; the University of Michigan was ranked 20th in the world in the 2019 ranking. The ARWU, was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities at the Graduate School of Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China as a way to compare Chinese universities with others around the world. The breakdown by academic subject was added in 2009. The complete subject rankings and a more detailed description of methodology can be found on the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy website.
This is the fourth consecutive year the U-M dental school has been ranked No. 1 in the world in the Shanghai ratings. Other dental schools in the top five this year are the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, King’s College London, the University of Washington, and Harvard University.
Shanghai Ranking is the second major international survey this year that has rated the U-M School of Dentistry highly. In March, for the sixth consecutive year, the QS World University Rankings rated the U-M dental school No. 1 in the United States; it also ranked the school No. 3 in the world, up from No. 5 the prior year. (See related QS ranking story from March 2020 here.)
