European universities could fare much better if only they would group. What that means is that in Lyon for example, the University of Lyon is legally divided in 16 institutions, Lyon 1 to Lyon 3, plus various other specialized colleges, e.g. my school, Insa de Lyon, for administrative reasons. Each is ranked separately in most lists. They do badly in Shangai Uni's ratings because each separately has 16 times less published papers, and the absolute number of publications is a big factor in most ratings.<p>Starting a few years ago, they started asking researchers and students to attribute their papers to "The University of Lyon", an entity that administratively does not exist, but logically it should. Most other universities I know in France are in the same situation, and have started applying similar measures.<p>Paris engineering colleges have grouped under a new entity, ParisTech, for example. Hopefully, this will focus attention and fix ratings. It should, because some member colleges have been around for some 1000 years, so they must be doing something right. Consider it a brand hack :)