Several organizations produce worldwide university rankings, including the following. The three longest established and most influential global rankings are those produced by
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS),
Times Higher Education (
THE) and Shanghai Ranking Consultancy (the
Academic Ranking of World Universities;
ARWU). All of these, along with other global rankings, primarily measure the research performance of universities rather than their teaching. They have been criticized for being "largely based on what can be measured rather than what is necessarily relevant and important to the university", While some rankings attempt to measure teaching using metrics such as staff to student ratio, the Higher Education Policy Institute has pointed out that the metrics used are more closely related to research than teaching quality, e.g. "Staff to student ratios are an almost direct measure of research activity", and "The proportion of PhD students is also to a large extent an indication of research activity". Some compilers, notably QS,
THE, and
U.S. News, use reputational surveys. The validity of these has been criticized: "Most experts are highly critical of the reliability of simply asking a rather unrandom group of educators and others involved with the academic enterprise for their opinions";
Major international rankings QS World University Rankings The QS World University Rankings are a ranking of the world's top universities produced by
Quacquarelli Symonds published annually since 2004. In 2024, they ranked 1500 universities, with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Imperial College London,
University of Oxford,
Harvard University and
University of Cambridge taking the top 5 spots. The QS rankings should not be confused with the
Times Higher Education World University Rankings. From 2004 to 2009 the QS rankings were published in collaboration with
Times Higher Education and were known as the
Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings. In 2010 QS assumed sole publication of rankings produced with this methodology when
Times Higher Education split from QS in order to create a new rankings methodology in partnership with
Thomson Reuters. The QS rankings were previously published in the United States by
U.S. News & World Report as the "World's Best Universities". However, in 2014,
U.S. News & World Report launched their own international university ranking titled "Best Global Universities". The inaugural ranking was published in October 2014. In 2023, for the 20th edition of the QS World University Rankings, released on 28 June 2023, QS following an 18 months long consultation involving representatives of the global higher education sector, students and the QS Rankings Global Advisory Board (established in 2010), introduced its largest-ever methodological enhancement, introducing three new metrics: Sustainability, Employment Outcomes and International Research Network, each worth 5% of a university's possible score. The results draw on the analysis of 17.5m academic papers (bibliometric data provided by data from
Scopus,) which informs the "Citation per Faculty" indicator and represent 20 percent of the overall score. The results also draw on the expert opinions of over 144,000 academic faculty and over 98,000 international employers. These two indicators are worth 30 percent and 15 percent of a university's possible score respectively. The QS rankings also incorporate faculty/student ratios (10 percent of the overall score) and international staff and student numbers (5 percent each of the overall score). The detailed methodology is available online.
QS Asian University Rankings The QS World University Rankings expanded its portfolio in 2009 to incorporate the Asian University Rankings. This expansion was executed in collaboration with
The Chosun Ilbo newspaper, based in
South Korea. By 2023, the rankings had grown to feature 760 universities. The eligibility criteria for these rankings were anchored in the
United Nations M49 Standard. These criteria update led to the inclusion of five Central Asian nations - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan - as well as Iran. For the first time in eight years, a Singaporean institution did not take the regional top spot, nor did Singapore occupy two of the top three positions. The city-state's hegemony at the top of the table was interrupted by the rise of China's premier institutions, particularly
Peking University, the new regional leader, breaking the
National University of Singapore's four-year run as Asia's number one university. NUS fell to second place while China's
Tsinghua University came third.
Nanyang Technological University dropped to fifth place. China (Mainland) was the region's most represented location, with 128 listed universities, followed by India with 118 and Japan with 106. Although the Asian University Rankings share some core metrics with the QS World University Rankings, there are variations in the weightings. Additionally, the methodology for the Asian rankings integrates region-specific indicators. Notably, these include metrics such as the percentage of staff with PhDs and data on inbound and outbound exchange students.
QS Latin American & Caribbean University Rankings The QS Latin American University & The Caribbean Rankings were published for the first time in 2011. The methodology was developed in consultation with experts from the region. Evaluating the region's institutions based on academic and employer recognition, research output, resources and internationalisation, the 2024 edition of the rankings lists 430 institutions across 25 locations.
Universidade de São Paulo tops the table, usurping
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile which comes second while Brazil's
Universidade Estadual de Campinas places third. Brazil is the most represented nation with 97 listed universities, followed by Mexico with 63 and Colombia with 61.
QS Arab Region Universities Rankings The first-ever QS Arab Region University Rankings is released in 2014. Evaluating institutions based on global recognition, research prowess, teaching resources and internationalisation (methodology), the 2024 edition of the ranking is the largest ever, showcasing 223 institutions from 18 member countries of the
Arab League.
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals topped the table, climbing from third place in the previous edition.
King Saud University came second while
Qatar University placed third. The previous year's leader,
King Abdulaziz University (KAU), dropped to fifth, after spending four consecutive years in the top spot. Egypt was the most represented higher education system, with 36 featured universities, followed by Saudi Arabia with 34 and Iraq with 24. The top ten universities in the Arab world:
Qatar University (Doha, Qatar);
King Saud University (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia);
Sultan Qaboos University (Muscat, Oman); the
American University of Beirut (Beirut, Lebanon); the
American University of Sharjah (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates); the
University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan);
United Arab Emirates University (Al Ain, United Arab Emirates);
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia);
Khalifa University (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates); and
King Abdulaziz University (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia). Arab-region scholars have proposed alternative methodologies for global and Arab rankings and argue that current schemes underweight contextual differences and display bias against Arab institutions. They recommend re calibrating indicators and weights.
QS Ranking by Subject The QS World University Rankings by Subject was first published in 2011, featuring 26 disciplines. The latest edition showcases over 1,500 universities and specialist higher education institutions across 55 different subjects, grouped into 5 faculty (broad subject) areas.
Times Higher Education World University Rankings From 2004 to 2009
Times Higher Education (
THE), a
British publication, published the annual
Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings in association with
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).
THE published a table of the top 200 universities and QS ranked approximately 500 online, in book form, and via media partners. On 30 October 2009,
THE broke with QS and joined
Thomson Reuters to provide a new set of world university rankings, called
Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The 2015/16 edition of the
Times Higher Education World University Rankings rank the world's 800 best universities, while the 2016/17 installment will rank the world's top 980. On 3 June 2010,
Times Higher Education revealed the methodology which they proposed to use when compiling the new world university rankings. The new methodology included 13 separate performance indicators, an increase from the six measures employed between 2004 and 2009. After further consultation the criteria were grouped under five broad overall indicators to produce the final ranking.
THE published its first rankings using its new methodology on 16 September 2010, a month earlier than previous years.
THE also kick-started
THE 100 Under 50 ranking and Alma Mater Index.
The Globe and Mail in 2010 described the
Times Higher Education World University Rankings as "arguably the most influential". Research published by professors at the
University of Michigan in 2011 demonstrated that the early
Times Higher Education Supplement rankings were disproportionately influential in establishing the status order of world research universities.
Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings This ranking was published for the first time in March 2011. The rankings are based on a survey of (for 2016) 10,323 academics from 133 countries, who are asked to talk the top universities in their field for teaching and for research.
Academic Ranking of World Universities The
Academic Ranking of World Universities (
ARWU) compiled originally by the
Shanghai Jiao Tong University and now maintained by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, has provided annual global rankings of universities since 2003, making it the earliest of its kind.
ARWU does not rely on surveys and school submissions. Among other criteria,
ARWU includes the number of articles published by
Nature or
Science and the number of
Nobel Prize winners and
Fields Medalists (mathematics). One of the primary criticisms of
ARWU methodology is that it is biased towards the
natural sciences and English language science journals over other subjects. Moreover, the
ARWU is known for "relying solely on research indicators", and "the ranking is heavily weighted toward institutions whose faculty or alumni have won Nobel Prizes": it does not measure "the quality of teaching or the quality of humanities."
Other global rankings Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities The Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities (ARTU) is a meta-ranking that positions global universities based on World University Rankings by
THE,
QS, and
ARWU. ARTU is produced by
UNSW Sydney and published annually since 2019, with retrospective rankings available for 2012 to 2018. In 2025, ARTU ranked more than 500 universities and featured the Top 400 for publication, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) securing first place, followed by Stanford University in second place. Harvard University and University of Oxford were tied for third place. The criteria for ARTU is the sum of world rank across the 3 rankings (=
THE+QS+
ARWU) with universities excluded if they do not have a distinct rank in
THE, QS, and
ARWU.
Academic Influence Academic Influence creates global and U.S.-centric rankings of colleges, universities, and disciplinary programs by evaluating the combined influence of a school's faculty within and across fields of study. Using machine-learning technology developed with funding from the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Academic Influence searches and collates open-source data from such massive publicly available data sources as
Wikipedia,
Wikidata,
Crossref,
Semantic Scholar,
IPEDS, and
BLS. Academic Influence gives weight in its rankings to citations of peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and books by influential academics worldwide. It thereby attempts to map and objectively measure the influence of a school's thought leadership through its students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Academic Influence allows users to create rankings on the fly through its dynamic schools and people tools, which can be filtered by discipline, country, and period. Tech entrepreneur and computer scientist
Erik J. Larson co-founded Academic Influence.
Center for World University Rankings The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) is based in the United Arab Emirates and publishes global university rankings measuring the quality of education and training for students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research. Samplings do not come from surveys and university data submissions. Instead, the rankings rely more on outcome-based samplings, coupled with a Subject ranking in 227 subject categories. The Subject portion of the ranking is based on the number of research articles in top-tier journals with data obtained from
Clarivate Analytics. In the United States, the CWUR evaluates and ranks over 1,300 universities and 2,000 worldwide.
Leiden Ranking The Centre for Science and Technology Studies at
Leiden University maintains a European and worldwide ranking of the top 500 universities according including the number and impact of Web of Science-indexed publications per year. The rankings compare research institutions by taking into account differences in language, discipline and institutional size. Multiple ranking lists are released according to various bibliometric normalization and impact indicators, including the number of publications, citations-per-publication, and field-averaged impact per publication.
Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities The Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities was produced until 2012 by the
Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT). The indicators were designed to measure both long-term and short-term research performance of research universities. This project employed
bibliometrics to analyze and rank the performance of the 500 top universities and the top 300 universities in six fields. HEEACT further provides subject rankings in science and technology fields. It also ranked the top 300 universities across ten science and technology fields. The ranking included eight indicators. They were: articles published over the prior 11 years; citations of those articles, "current" articles, current citations, average citations, "H-index", number of "highly cited papers" and high impact journal articles. They represented three criteria of scientific papers performance: research productivity, research impact, and research excellence. The 2007 ranking methodology was alleged to have favored universities with medical schools, and in response, HEEACT added assessment criteria. The six field-based rankings are based on the subject categorization of WOS, including Agriculture & Environment Sciences (AGE), Clinical Medicine (MED), Engineering, Computing & Technology (ENG), Life Sciences (LIFE), Natural Sciences (SCI) and Social Sciences (SOC). The ten subjects include Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Geosciences, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering (including Energy & Fuels), Materials Sciences, and Civil Engineering (including Environmental Engineering).
Reuters World's Top 100 Innovative Universities The ranking uses a methodology with 10 metrics. The process cross-references the 500 academic and government organizations with the greatest number of published articles in scholarly journals as indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science Core Collection database against how many patents and patent equivalents each organization filed in the same period in the Derwent World Patents Index and the Derwent Innovations Index. The remaining 70 institutions were mostly universities and were ranked using criteria such as frequency of patent applications granted, the number of filed patents, frequency of those patents being cited, as well as how many of their papers were cited by patents or co-authored by an industry author. The ranking has the
Asia-Pacific edition featuring top 75 institutions across the region and top 25 most innovative
governmental institutions in the world. Currently, the last available edition of the ranking dates back to 2019.
Round University Ranking Round University Ranking, or abbreviated RUR Rankings is a world university ranking, assessing effectiveness of 750 leading universities in the world based on 20 indicators distributed among 4 key dimension areas: teaching, research, international diversity, financial sustainability. The ranking has international coverage and is intended to become a tool of choice of the university for the key stakeholders of higher education: applicants, students, representatives of the academic community, university management. The RUR Rankings publisher is an independent RUR Rankings Agency, geographically located in Moscow, Russia. RUR is aimed to provide a transparent, comprehensive analytical system for benchmarking and evaluating universities across the borders to the widest possible audience: students, analysts, decision-makers in the field of higher education development both at individual institutional and at the national level.
SCImago Institutions Rankings The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) since 2009 has published its international ranking of worldwide research institutions, the SIR World Report. The SIR World Report is the work of the SCImago Research Group, a Spain-based research organization consist of members from the
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC),
University of Granada,
Charles III University of Madrid,
University of Alcalá,
University of Extremadura and other education institutions in Spain. The ranking measures areas such as research output, international collaboration, normalized impact, and publication rate. First released in 2026, it is distinct from other international rankings such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, despite the similarity in names. The ranking was developed to assess universities based not only on academic strength but also on their broader societal influence, innovation capacity, and the achievements of their graduates. The methodology combines a range of quantitative indicators drawn from institutional data, bibliometric sources, patent databases, and large-scale surveys. Rather than focusing primarily on research citations or academic reputation, the ranking places significant emphasis on real-world impact. Factors considered include research performance, teaching resources, knowledge transfer, global outlook, industry collaboration, entrepreneurship, and the professional success and leadership roles attained by alumni. A distinguishing feature of the ranking is its focus on outcomes beyond academia. Metrics relating to innovation, patents, start-up activity, and economic contribution are weighted alongside traditional measures of scholarly output. Graduate employability, influence in public life, and the production of business and political leaders are also considered, reflecting an intention to identify institutions that shape society as well as scholarship. In its inaugural edition, universities in the United Kingdom and the United States dominated the upper positions, with the University of Oxford ranked first globally. Other highly placed institutions included Yale University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Imperial College London. The results broadly reflected the concentration of research funding, global reputation, and alumni influence associated with long-established elite institutions. The publication of the ranking has been interpreted as part of a wider shift in how higher education performance is evaluated internationally. By foregrounding innovation and societal impact, it complements rather than replicates established rankings such as QS, Shanghai (ARWU), and Times Higher Education. Supporters argue that it provides a more holistic view of institutional influence, while critics note that measures of “impact” and “success” can favour wealthy universities and may be difficult to standardise across different national contexts. As a new entrant in the field of global higher education comparisons, the TIME ranking’s long-term authority and methodological stability remain subjects of ongoing scrutiny. Nonetheless, it represents an attempt to broaden the criteria by which universities are judged, reflecting increasing public and policy interest in economic contribution, social mobility, and global leadership outcomes alongside traditional academic excellence.
U-Multirank U-Multirank, a European Commission supported feasibility study, was undertaken to contribute to the
European Commission objective of enhancing transparency about the different missions and the performance of higher education institutions and research institutes. At a press conference in
Brussels on 13 May 2011, the U-Multirank was officially launched by
Androulla Vassiliou,
Commissioner for Higher Education and Culture saying: U-Multirank "will be useful to each participating higher education institution, as a planning and self-mapping exercise. By providing students with clearer information to guide their study choices, this is a fresh tool for more quality, relevance and transparency in
European higher education."
University Ranking by Academic Performance The
University Ranking by Academic Performance, abbreviated as URAP, was developed in the Informatics Institute of
Middle East Technical University. Since 2010, it has been publishing annual national and global college and university rankings for top 2000 institutions. The
scientometrics measurement of URAP is based on data obtained from the
Institute for Scientific Information via
Web of Science and inCites. For global rankings, URAP employs indicators of research performance including the number of articles, citation, total documents, article impact total, citation impact total, and international collaboration. In addition to global rankings, URAP publishes regional rankings for universities in
Turkey using additional indicators such as the number of students and faculty members obtained from Center of Measuring, Selection and Placement
ÖSYM.
U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities Rankings U.S. News & World Report inaugural Best Global Universities ranking was launched on 28 October 2014, and it was based on data and metrics provided by
Thomson Reuters, and are thus methodologically different from the criteria traditionally used by
U.S. News to rank American institutions. Universities are judged on factors such as global research reputation, publications, and the number of highly cited papers.
U.S. News also publishes region-specific and subject-specific global rankings based on this methodology. The annual
U.S. News Best Global Universities rankings were produced to provide insight into how universities compare globally. As an increasing number of students are planning to enroll in universities outside of their own country, the Best Global Universities rankings – which focus specifically on schools' academic research and reputation overall and not on their separate undergraduate or graduate programs – can help those students accurately compare institutions around the world. The Best Global Universities rankings also provide insight into how U.S. universities – which
U.S. News has been ranking separately for more than 30 years – stand globally. All universities can now benchmark themselves against schools in their own country and region, become more visible on the world stage and find top schools in other countries to consider collaborating with. The overall Best Global Universities rankings encompass the top 750 institutions spread out across 57 countries – up from the top 500 universities in 49 countries ranked last year. The first step in producing these rankings, which are powered by Thomson Reuters InCitesTM research analytics solutions, involved creating a pool of 1,000 universities that was used to rank the top 750 schools. In comparison with
U.S. News Best Colleges Ranking, the Global University Ranking is focused on the research power and faculty resources for students, while the National Ranking is only focused on undergraduate studies. Therefore, for graduate studies and international students, the Best Global Universities Ranking is a much better reference than National University Ranking.
Inside Higher Ed noted that
U.S. News is entering into the international college and university rankings area that is already "dominated by three major global university rankings": the
Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the
Academic Ranking of World Universities, and the
QS World University Rankings.
U.S. News' chief data strategist Robert Morse stated: "We're well-known in the field for doing academic rankings so we thought it was a natural extension of the other rankings that we're doing." is owned by the French
consulting company and
rating agency SMBG. It ranks masters and MBA in its 9 geographical regions (the 5 continents).
Human Resources & Labor Review The Human Resources & Labor Review (HRLR) publishes a human competitiveness index & analysis annually by Asia First Media—now part of Destiny Media, previously ChaseCareer Network (ChaseCareer.Net). This system is based on Human Resources & Labour Review Indexes, the HRI and LRI, which measure the performance of top 300 universities' graduates. In 2004, a couple of educational institutions voiced concerns at several events in regard to the accuracy and effectiveness of ranking bodies or lists. The HRLR ranking was pioneered in late 2005 within a working group in response to those concerns. The team was founded in January 2007, in London, and started compiling and processing data, resulting in the first lists in 2007–2008.): 1) ratio of administrators to faculty members and 2) the ratio of students to administrators. Both values can be acquired from free publicly available databases to determine if universities are preferentially investing more in administration rather than the education of their students. The concern for administrative bloat has become so large that Yale University professors have started a petition in 2025 to freeze administrative hires.
Nature Index The
Nature Index tracks the affiliations of high-quality scientific articles published in 68 science journals independently chosen by the scientific community as the journals scientists would most like to publish their best research in. Updated monthly, the Nature Index presents research reports of approximately 9,000 parent institutions worldwide presenting a page of output statistics for each institution along with information on institutions collaborating with the institution in the publication of Index articles. Each of the approximately 60,000 articles in the Index has a dedicated article page with social and mainstream media coverage tracked by Altmetric. League tables of the output of institutions can be generated on the fly on a global, regional, or country basis and by broad subject area as well as by article count and fractional article count. Compare with other metrics of science (e.g., Impact Factor, h-index), Nature Index is the prominent scientific journal ranking with global reputation on original
natural science and
life science research.
Professional Ranking of World Universities In contrast to academic rankings, the
Professional Ranking of World Universities established in 2007 by the
École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris measures the efficiency of each university at producing leading business professionals. Its main compilation criterion is the number of
Chief Executive Officers (or equivalent) among the
Fortune Global 500. This ranking has been criticized for placing five French universities into the top 20.
Global University Ranking Global University Ranking measures over 400 universities using the RatER, an autonomous, non-commercial, Russian rating agency supported by Russia's academic society. The methodology pools universities from
ARWU, HEEACT,
Times-QS and Webometrics and a pool of experts formed by project officials and managers to determine the rating scales for indicators in seven areas. It considers academic performance, research performance, faculty expertise, resource availability, socially significant activities of graduates, international activities, and international opinion. Each expert independently evaluates these performance indicators for candidate universities. The rating is the average of the expert evaluations. This ranking raised questions when it placed Russian
Moscow State University in fifth place, ahead of
Harvard and
Cambridge.
High Impact Universities: Research Performance Index The High Impact Universities Research Performance Index (RPI) is a 2010 Australian initiative that studies university research performance. The pilot project involved a trial of over 1,000 universities or institutions and 5,000 constituent faculties (in various disciplines) worldwide. The top 500 results for universities and faculties were reported on the project website. ==Regional and national rankings==