Shanghai Ranking Shake-Up Reshapes How Spanish Universities Score in Education

The Shanghai Ranking, formally known as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), has long been the most closely watched scoreboard in global higher education, and a new open-access study published in the Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research reveals just how dramatically its methodology shifted between 2022 and 2024, and what those shifts meant for Spanish universities competing in the field of Education. Researchers Odiel Estrada-Molina of the University of Valladolid, together with Begoña Mora-Jaureguialde and Ignacio Aguaded of the University of Huelva, conducted a qualitative, comparative documentary analysis of the ranking’s official methodologies, triangulating data from ShanghaiRanking reports, bibliometric databases and the scholarly literature on ranking systems. Their central finding is both encouraging and unsettling: the ranking is moving decisively toward quality-oriented indicators, yet those very indicators continue to structurally disadvantage disciplines like Education, where local impact and qualitative research traditions are essential.

The technical details of the methodological evolution are striking. In 2022, the ARWU subject methodology rested on five indicators applied uniformly across all disciplines: Top Journal Papers (TOP), which counted publications in high-impact journals selected through the Academic Excellence Survey; Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI), which adjusted citation counts by discipline to allow fair comparison across fields; International Collaboration (IC), which measured the proportion of publications co-authored with institutions abroad; Number of Papers (PUB), a pure volume measure of output per institution; and Award, which recognized major academic prizes. In 2023 the structure remained largely intact, with the only notable refinement being the inclusion of 31 conferences within the TOP indicator for Computer Science and Engineering. Education saw no modifications at all that year, a silence the researchers interpret as evidence that the methodology’s designers were still calibrating their metrics for technical fields while leaving the social sciences largely untouched.

Then came 2024, and with it a genuine turning point. The methodology was reorganized into five weighted categories: World-Class Faculty (20 percent), incorporating Highly Cited Researchers along with new Leadership and Editor metrics; World-Class Output (15 percent), focused on high-impact publications; High-Quality Research (15 percent), introducing first-quartile journal papers (Q1); Research Impact (20 percent), retaining CNCI; and International Collaboration (30 percent), whose weighting was dramatically increased. Two changes stand out. The PUB indicator, which had rewarded sheer publication volume, was eliminated entirely, a clear signal that the ranking now prioritizes quality over quantity. And the traditional Award indicator was replaced by leadership metrics such as journal editorship and scholarly leadership roles, shifting recognition from historical prizes to present-day institutional influence within global academic networks.

For Spanish universities, the consequences of these shifts were heterogeneous and, in places, sobering. Between 2022 and 2023, the average CNCI score across the Spanish institutions in the Education category fell by one point, but with high dispersion: some universities, notably Santiago de Compostela and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), improved markedly while others declined. International collaboration dropped by an average of 7.8 points, a decline the authors link plausibly to lingering mobility restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic and a possible prioritization of national projects. Most dramatic was the TOP indicator, which fell by an average of 11.2 points, with every Spanish university in the category recording a value of zero in 2023, meaning that no institution managed to publish in the high-impact journals selected by the ranking’s survey. Meanwhile, the Q1 indicator, measuring the share of publications in the top quartile of journals, rose by an average of 4.1 percentage points, suggesting that while Spanish education researchers were publishing in respectable venues, the very top tier remained out of reach.

The 2024 data, however, delivered a genuine surprise: small Spanish universities, including Huelva, Alcalá, Alicante and Córdoba, appeared in the Education category for the first time, joining the giants such as the University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Madrid. Their scores tell a nuanced story. On the faculty quality indicator, Huelva scored 22.4, Alcalá 12.9 and Alicante 7.9, well below the consolidated universities whose scores exceed 30 points, reflecting staff with less international projection, likely tied to institutional size and a historical focus on teaching rather than high-impact research. Yet in research quality the picture brightens considerably: Huelva scored 20.3, Alcalá 18.4 and Alicante 26.7, moderate values that, while below the leaders, meet acceptable standards. Research impact proved remarkably homogeneous among the smaller institutions, with values near 33.6 for Huelva and Alcalá and 33.3 for Alicante, demonstrating that despite lower output volumes, their published work resonates within the field.

Why does Education fare so poorly under these metrics in the first place? The study digs into the structural idiosyncrasy of the discipline. Educational research is overwhelmingly produced by educators and trainers disseminating classroom innovations, teaching methods and applied projects, often through qualitative methodologies and with a fundamentally local or national audience. An article about how to teach medicine is likely to appear in a medical journal rather than an education journal, scattering the field’s output across countless venues and complicating any attempt at homogeneous classification. Education also lacks the internationally prestigious prizes that fuel the Award and faculty indicators in Medicine or Physics, and its first-quartile journals are concentrated in English-speaking and Chinese-speaking countries, marginalizing research published in other languages. The authors note that many Web of Science journals indexed in Education-related categories are actually oriented toward educational technology and informatics with a techno-pedagogical focus rather than pedagogy in the broader sense, further skewing what counts as visible scholarship.

The 2024 methodology amplifies some of these problems even as it solves others. The elimination of PUB removes the crude volume penalty that hurt small institutions, but the new World-Class Faculty category rewards universities wealthy enough to attract or train renowned academics, hold journal editorships and accumulate highly cited researchers, generating what the authors describe as structural inequalities between institutions. The International Collaboration category, now weighted at a hefty 30 percent, penalizes universities with limited resources, language constraints or little international tradition; the small Spanish universities scored dramatically low here, with Huelva at 6.8, Alcalá at 6.3 and Alicante at 5.4, far below the national leaders. The researchers point to programs such as Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe, along with Latin American thematic networks that share a common cultural space with Spain, as practical avenues for closing this gap. The CNCI indicator, meanwhile, continues to disadvantage contextualized, regionally relevant studies that naturally attract fewer international citations than work in Physics or Health Sciences.

The authors do not simply critique; they propose a strategy. Spanish universities, they argue, should pursue a diversified approach that improves ranking performance without compromising educational mission: publish strategically in first-quartile journals while maintaining outlets for local and qualitative work; strengthen international networks through collaborative projects and global consortia; invest in faculty development and stability, including nominations for international awards and leadership roles in journals and scientific associations; and build institutional visibility programs that showcase educational innovation and contextual impact. For smaller universities, entry into the ranking should be read not as exposure of weakness but as an opportunity to carve out a differentiated niche, attract external academic talent and consolidate local talent-development programs that could, over time, lift the faculty indicators.

The study is candid about its own limitations. It depends on bibliometric data from Web of Science and Scopus, databases that privilege English-language, high-impact publications and under-represent research in other languages and formats such as books, pedagogical reports and local studies, precisely the formats in which Education produces much of its value. The lack of disaggregated sub-area data within Education makes it hard to assess how indicators affect fields like educational technology, inclusive pedagogy or teacher training. And the ranking’s constant methodological churn, eliminating PUB one year and introducing World-Class Faculty the next, complicates longitudinal comparison. The authors call for alternative metrics that capture local relevance, community impact and pedagogical innovation, for critical review of the major bibliometric databases, and for qualitative case studies and expert interviews to understand how institutions actually navigate these systems.

The broader message resonates far beyond Spain. Global rankings such as ARWU, Times Higher Education and QS have become the dominant lenses through which university prestige is perceived, yet their indicators were designed mainly for scientific and technical disciplines, biasing evaluation against the social sciences and humanities. The 2024 Shanghai methodology represents real progress, a shift from counting papers to weighing quality, leadership and collaboration, but it still embodies what the researchers call a marked positivist vision, prioritizing theoretical, generalizable research over the applied, locally embedded studies that train teachers and shape educational systems. As the authors conclude, the true value of educational research lies in its capacity to transform lives and build inclusive societies, and evaluation systems must evolve so that global excellence and local relevance can coexist, ensuring that small institutions and applied disciplines are not merely counted, but genuinely valued.

Subject of Research: The impact of Shanghai Ranking methodology changes (2022–2024) on the positioning of Spanish universities in the Education category

Article Title: Spanish universities in the Shanghai ranking in education (2022–2024)

Article References: Estrada-Molina, O., Mora-Jaureguialde, B., & Aguaded, I. (2025). Spanish universities in the Shanghai ranking in education (2022–2024). Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 14(1), Article 20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44322-025-00042-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44322-025-00042-z

Keywords: Shanghai Ranking, ARWU, university rankings, Spanish universities, higher education, Education discipline, bibliometrics, research evaluation, international collaboration, methodology, qualitative research, academic rankings