(17 Aug.) The Academic Ranking of World Universities published every year by the Jiao Tong University of Shanghai placed, for the 2012 ranking, two Italian universities, that of Pisa and the Sapienza University in Rome, between the 101st and 150th place. These academic centers are the first Italian universities to appear on the list, before the Universities of Milan and Padua (ranked between 150 and 200), and the Universities of Bologna, Turin and Milan’s Polytechnic (ranked between 201 and 300). 20 Italian universities appear in the top 500 of the world for 2012, while in 2011, 22 were present on the list. This means that Italy is now 8th in the world for number of universities present – an even ranking with France. The best-performing countries are still the United States (17 universities in the top 20, and 150 in the top 500), China (42 universities in the top 500, but none in the top 20), the United Kingdom (38), and Germany (37).
