College and university rankings order the best institutions in

higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after compl ...

based on factors that vary depending on the ranking. Some rankings evaluate institutions within a single country, while others assess institutions worldwide. Rankings are typically conducted by

magazines A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination ...

newspapers A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wiki ...

governments A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

, or academics. In addition to ranking entire institutions, specific programs, departments, and schools can be ranked. Some rankings consider measures of

wealth Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word , which is from an I ...

, excellence in

research Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

, selective admissions, and

alumni Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...

success. Rankings may also consider various combinations of measures of specialization expertise, student options, award numbers, internationalization, graduate employment, industrial linkage, historical reputation and other criteria. There is much debate about rankings' interpretation, accuracy, and usefulness. The expanding diversity in rating

methodologies In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...

and accompanying criticisms of each indicate the lack of consensus in the field. Further, it seems possible to game the ranking systems through excessive self-citations or by researchers supporting each other in surveys.

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

has questioned whether rankings "do more harm than good", while acknowledging that "Rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as a measure of quality and so create intense competition between universities all over the world".

Global rankings

See Regional and national rankings for university rankings within a particular region. Several organizations produce worldwide university rankings, including the following. The three longest established and most influential global rankings are those produced by

Quacquarelli Symonds Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) is a British company specialising in the analysis of higher education institutions around the world. The company was founded in 1990 by Nunzio Quacquarelli. History On 5 October 2017, QS Quacquarelli Symonds acquired Ho ...

(QS), ''

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

'' (''THE'') and Shanghai Ranking Consultancy (the ''

Academic Ranking of World Universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong Universi ...

''; ''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", and the validity of the data available globally has been questioned. As of 2021, across the three most popular global rankings, "the majority of the top-ten globally ranked institutions are located in

southern England Southern England, or the South of England, also known as the South, is an area of England consisting of its southernmost part, with cultural, economic and political differences from the Midlands and the North. Officially, the area includes ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, the Tri-State area (

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the ...

), and nearby

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

." 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".

Inside Higher Ed ''Inside Higher Ed'' is a media company and online publication that provides news, opinion, resources, events and jobs focused on college and university topics. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold Inside Higher Education to Tim ...

similarly states "these criteria do not actually measure teaching, and none even come close to assessing the quality of impact". Many rankings are also considered to contain biases towards the natural sciences and, due to the bibliometric sources used, towards publication in English-language journals. Some rankings, including ''ARWU'', also fail to make any correction for the sizes of institutions, so a large institution is ranked considerably higher than a small institution with the same quality of research. Other compilers, such as Scimago and ''U.S. News & World Report'', use a mix of size-dependent and size-independent metrics. 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"; "methodologically nternational surveys of reputationare flawed, effectively they only measure research performance and they skew the results in favor of a small number of institutions." However, despite the criticism, much attention is paid to global rankings, particularly ''ARWU'', QS, and ''THE''. Some countries, including Denmark and the Netherlands, use university rankings as part of points-based immigration programs, while others, such as Russia, automatically recognize degrees from higher-ranked universities. India's University Grants Commission requires foreign partners of Indian universities to be ranked in the top 500 of the ''THE'' or ''ARWU'' ranking, while Brazil's Science Without Borders program selected international partner institutions using the ''THE'' and QS rankings.

Major international rankings

QS World University Rankings

The QS World University Rankings are a ranking of the world's top universities produced by

published annually since 2004. In 2022, they ranked 1300 universities, with the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

taking the top 5 spots. According to

Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. was an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stoc ...

, it is the most widely viewed university ranking worldwide. The QS rankings should not be confused with the ''

Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' (often referred to as the THE Rankings) is an annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarel ...

''. From 2004 to 2009 the QS rankings were published in collaboration with ''

'' and were known as the ''

Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems. Time or times may also refer to: Temporal measurement * Time in physics, defined by its measurement * Time standard, civil time specific ...

''. 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 Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre. Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corp ...

. 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. The QS rankings use peer review data collected (in 2016) from 74,651 scholars and academics and 37,781 recruiters. These two indicators are worth 40 percent and 10 percent of a university's possible score respectively. The QS rankings also incorporate citation per faculty member data from

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top- ...

, faculty/student ratios, and international staff and student numbers. The citations and faculty/student measures are worth 20 percent of an institution's total possible score and the international staff and student data five percent each. QS has published online material about its methodology. QS published the 2016

QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for th ...

online on 5 September 2016. The rankings also appear in book form, and via media partners including ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'', '' U.S. News & World Report'' and ''

The Chosun Ilbo ''The Chosun Ilbo'' (, ) is a daily newspaper in South Korea and the oldest daily newspaper in the country. With a daily circulation of more than 1,800,000, the ''Chosun Ilbo'' has been audited annually since the Audit Bureau of Circulations w ...

''. QS has added to its main World University Rankings, starting in 2009 with the Asian University Rankings. The QS Latin American University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings by Subject were published for the first time in 2011, as well as a faculty ranking worldwide, Top 50 under 50 and Next 50 under 50 ranking and graduate employment ranking. QS now also publish regional rankings for the Arab Region, Emerging Europe and Central Asia, and the five BRICS nations. The subject rankings are intended to address the most frequent criticism of all world university ranking systems, that they contain too little material about specific subjects. These rankings have been drawn up on the basis of citations, academic peer review, and recruiter review, with the weightings for each dependent upon the culture and practice of the subject concerned. They are published in five clusters; engineering; biomedicine; the natural sciences; the social sciences; and the arts and humanities, and covered 42 subjects in 2016. The QS rankings have been criticized for their commercial purpose and can be manipulated by researchers from different universities agreeing to support each other in the surveys. QS Asian University Rankings In 2009, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) launched a department of the ''QS Asian University Rankings'' in partnership with ''

'' newspaper in Korea. They rank the top 350 Asian universities and the ranking has now appeared eight times. They release an independent list of rankings each time, different from that of the QS World University Rankings. For three consecutive years up to the 2016/17 edition, the rankings was topped by the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. Founded in 1905 as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, NUS is the oldest autonomous university in th ...

. These rankings use some of the same criteria as the World University Rankings but they use other measures, such as incoming and outgoing exchange students as well. As the criteria and their weightings are different, the QS World university rankings and the QS Asian University rankings released in the same academic year are different. QS published global universities ranking by different major in different countries, which has special reference value for international students, like Statistics & Operational Research program in China. QS Latin American University Rankings The QS Latin American University Rankings were launched in 2011. They use academic opinion (30 percent), employer opinion (20 percent), publications per faculty member, citations per paper, academic staff with a PhD, faculty/student ratio, and web visibility (10 percent each) as measures. These criteria were developed in consultation with experts in Latin America, and the web visibility data comes from Webometrics. The 2016/17 edition of the ranking ranks the top 300 universities in the region, and showed that the University of São Paulo in Brazil is the region's top institution.

Times Higher Education World University Rankings

From 2004 to 2009 ''

'' (''THE''), a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

publication, published the annual ''

Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings The term Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings refers to rankings published jointly between 2004 and 2009 by ''Times Higher Education'' and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). After QS and ''Times Higher Education'' had ended their collabora ...

'' in association with

(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

to provide a new set of world university rankings, called ''

''. 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 ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' in 2010 described the ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' as "arguably the most influential". Research published by professors at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 2011 demonstrated that the early '' THES'' 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 Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU; ) is a Public university, public research university in Shanghai, Shanghai, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Ministry of Education of China ...

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 The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winners and

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award h ...

ists (mathematics). Harvard and Stanford have topped the ranking for years. One of the primary criticisms of ''ARWU'' methodology is that it is biased towards the

natural science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

s 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 ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

'', QS, and ''

ARWU The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ...

''. ARTU is produced by

UNSW Sydney The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-inte ...

and published annually since 2019, with retrospective rankings available for 2012 to 2018. In 2022, ARTU ranked 418 universities and featured the Top 400 for publication, with Harvard and Stanford leading in equal first 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''. Since 2012, United States has the highest number of ARTU Top 200 universities, while Switzerland has the most ARTU Top 200 universities per capita. New features in 2022 include Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Research & Development (R&D) expenditure as modifiers to determine country level performance and return on investment. Hong Kong and Australia come out on top for GDP and R&D respectively for most ARTU Top 200 universities adjusted by these indicators.

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 Clarivate Plc is a British-American publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business / market intelligence, and competitive profiling for ...

. 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 Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city o ...

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 The Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT; {{zh, t=財團法人高等教育評鑑中心基金會) was founded in May 2005. HEEACT applied for ISO certification in July 2008 and received certification on 4 February ...

(HEEACT). The indicators were designed to measure both long-term and short-term research performance of research universities. This project employed

bibliometrics Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse books, articles and other publications, especially in regard with scientific contents. Bibliometric methods are frequently used in the field of library and information science. Bibliom ...

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). The ranking was produced by

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

since 2012 and also known as NTU Ranking.

Reuters World's Top 100 Innovative Universities

The ranking is empirical and compiles a methodology that employs 10 different metrics. The criteria focused on

academic papers Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally publ ...

, which indicate basic research performed at a university, and

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

filings, which point to an institution's interest in protecting and commercializing its discoveries. Compiled by the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the list uses proprietary data and analysis tools. 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 Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Paci ...

edition featuring top 75 institutions across the region and top 25 most innovative

governmental A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

institutions in the world.

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,SCImago Research GroupSIR World Report 2010. Research Institution Ranking (Press)
. a Spain-based research organization consist of members from the

Spanish National Research Council The Spanish National Research Council ( es, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC) is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe. Its main objective is to develop and promote res ...

(CSIC),

University of Granada The University of Granada ( es, Universidad de Granada, UGR) is a public university located in the city of Granada, Spain, and founded in 1531 by Emperor Charles V. With more than 60,000 students, it is the fourth largest university in Spain. Ap ...

Charles III University of Madrid University Charles III of Madrid ( es, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) (UC3M) is a public university in the Community of Madrid, Spain. Established in 1989, UC3M is an institution with a distinctly international profile. It offers a broad ran ...

University of Alcalá The University of Alcalá ( es, Universidad de Alcalá) is a public university located in Alcalá de Henares, a city 35 km (22 miles) northeast of Madrid in Spain and also the third-largest city of the region. It was founded in 1293 as a ...

University of Extremadura University of Extremadura (in es, Universidad de Extremadura) is a Spanish public university in Extremadura (Badajoz and Cáceres). It was founded in 1973 by Decree 991/1973, May 10 (BOE May 18) of the Ministry of Education and Science of Sp ...

and other education institutions in Spain. The ranking measures areas such as research output, international collaboration, normalized impact, and publication rate.

U-Multirank

U-Multirank, a European Commission supported feasibility study, was undertaken to contribute to the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

objective of enhancing transparency about the different missions and the performance of higher education institutions and research institutes. At a press conference in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

on 13 May 2011, the U-Multirank was officially launched by

Androulla Vassiliou Androulla Vassiliou ( el, Ανδρούλλα Βασιλείου; born 30 November 1943) is a Cypriot and European politician. Between March 2008 and February 2010, she was the European Commissioner for Health, and then, until November 2014, t ...

, 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 The University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) is a College and university rankings, university ranking developed by the Informatics Institute of Middle East Technical University. Since 2010, it has been publishing annual national and glob ...

, abbreviated as URAP, was developed in the Informatics Institute of

Middle East Technical University Middle East Technical University (commonly referred to as METU; in Turkish, ''Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi'', ODTÜ) is a public technical university located in Ankara, Turkey. The university emphasizes research and education in engineering ...

. Since 2010, it has been publishing annual national and global college and university rankings for top 2000 institutions. The

scientometrics Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academ ...

measurement of URAP is based on data obtained from the

Institute for Scientific Information The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysi ...

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 Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

using additional indicators such as the number of students and faculty members obtained from Center of Measuring, Selection and Placement

ÖSYM The Measuring, Selection and Placement Center ( tr, Ölçme, Seçme ve Yerleştirme Merkezi, ÖSYM) is the body responsible for organizing the national level university entrance examination Student Selection and Placement System, and several other ...

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

, 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. ''

'' 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 ''

'', the ''

'', and the ''

''. ''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." Morse pointed out that ''U.S. News'' as "the first American publisher to enter the global rankings space", given ''

'' and QS are both British, while the Academic Ranking of World universities is Chinese.

Webometrics

The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities is produced by

Cybermetrics Lab {{unsourced, date=November 2010 The Cybermetrics Lab is a research group of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The organization is responsible for editing the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. Currently more than 48,000 web doma ...

(CCHS), a unit of the

(CSIC), the main public research body in Spain. It offers information about more than 12,000 universities according to their web presence (an assessment of the scholarly contents, visibility, and impact of universities on the web). The ranking is updated every January and July. The

Webometrics The science of webometrics (also cybermetrics) tries to measure the World Wide Web to get knowledge about the number and types of hyperlinks, structure of the World Wide Web and using patterns. According to Björneborn and Ingwersen, the definitio ...

Ranking or Ranking Web is built from a database of over 30,000 higher education institutions. The top 12,000 universities are shown in the main ranking and more are covered in regional lists. The ranking started in 2004 and is based on a composite indicator that includes both the volume of the Web content and the visibility and impact of web publications according to the number of external links they received. A wide range of scientific activities appears exclusively on academic websites and is typically overlooked by bibliometric indicators. Webometric indicators measure institutional commitment to Web publication. Webometric results show a high correlation with other rankings. However, North American universities are relatively common in the top 200, while small and medium-size biomedical institutions and German, French, Italian, and Japanese universities were less common in the top ranks. Possible reasons include publishing via independent research councils (CNRS, Max Planck, CNR) or the large amount of non-English Web content, which is less likely to be linked.

The Three University Missions

The Three University Missions Moscow International University Ranking (shortly MosIUR) is produced by Association of Rating Makers, a non-commercial organization based in Moscow. The Three University Missions ranking evaluates the quality of education, scientific work, and the universities' contribution to society. The ranking uses 17 criteria divided into three groups: Education, Research, and University and Society. The shortlist of the Moscow International University Ranking aims to provide the widest possible representation of the leading multi-profile universities all over the world, the quota being assigned to each country with regard to the of the country’s contribution to global economy. MosIUR shortlists those universities that achieved leading positions in other global university rankings and/or national academic rankings listed in IREG Inventory of National Rankings, and, in some cases, also those universities showing the highest research productivity. MosIUR does not consider narrow-focused higher education institutions. The latest Moscow Ranking issue featured 1800 higher education institutions globally.

Specific rankings

Eduniversal

This university ranking is owned by the French

consulting A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

company and

rating agency A credit rating agency (CRA, also called a ratings service) is a company that assigns credit ratings, which rate a debtor's ability to pay back debt by making timely principal and interest payments and the likelihood of default. An agency may rat ...

''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. The ranking concept is later being adopted for Alumni score on ''

'' and many other rankings. The new HRLR ranking innovative methods sparked intense interest from many institutions and inspired several other ranking lists and scoring which are based on professional, alumni, executives, competitiveness, human capital-oriented aspects. Nevertheless, HRLR remains to be the leader in university ranking with innovative and comprehensive approaches, and not relying merely on those aforementioned aspects.

Nature Index

The

Nature Index The Nature Index is a database that tracks institutions and countries and their scientific output since its introduction in November, 2014. Each year, Nature Index ranks the leading institutions (which can be companies, universities, government agen ...

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

and

life science Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

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 Mines Paris - PSL, officially École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris (until May 2022 Mines ParisTech, also known as École des mines de Paris, ENSMP, Mines de Paris, les Mines, or Paris School of Mines), is a French grande école and a c ...

measures the efficiency of each university at producing leading business professionals. Its main compilation criterion is the number of

Chief Executive Officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

s (or equivalent) among the

Fortune Global 500 The ''Fortune'' Global 500, also known as Global 500, is an annual ranking of the top 500 corporations worldwide as measured by revenue. The list is compiled and published annually by ''Fortune'' magazine. Methodology Until 1989, it listed onl ...

. This ranking has been criticized for placing five French universities into the top 20.

Defunct rankings

G-factor

G-factor ranks university and college web presence by counting the number of links only from other university websites, using

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

data. G-factor is an indicator of the popularity or importance of each university's website from the combined perspectives of other institutions. It claims to be an objective peer review of a university through its website—in

social network theory A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for a ...

terminology, G-factor measures the centrality of each university's website in the

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematic ...

of university websites.

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 M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

in fifth place, ahead of

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

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. The project promotes simplicity, transparency and fairness. The assessment analyzes research performance as measured by publications and citations. Publication and citation data are drawn from

. The project uses standard bibliometric indicators, namely the 10-year

g-index The ''g''-index is an author-level metric suggested in 2006 by Leo Egghe. The index is calculated based on the distribution of citations received by a given researcher's publications, such that given a set of articles ranked in decreasing order o ...

and

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

. RPI equally weighs contributions from the five faculties. The five faculty scores are normalized to place them onto a common scale. The normalized scores are then averaged to arrive at a final RPI.

Newsweek

In August 2006, the American magazine ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...

'' published a ranking of the Top 100 Global Universities, using selected criteria from ''ARWU'' and the ''Times Higher Education''-QS rankings, with the additional criterion of the number of volumes in the library. It formed part of a special issue including an article from

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of t ...

, then

prime minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

of the UK, but has not been repeated. It considered openness and diversity as well as distinction in research. The ranking has been continued since its merger with ''

The Daily Beast ''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. It was founded in 2008. It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 20 ...

'', and currently uses data from the ''Times Higher Education World Rankings'', Webometrics world college rankings from public-research outlet

Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas The Spanish National Research Council ( es, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC) is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe. Its main objective is to develop and promote res ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

, and the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy in order to compile its results.

Regional and national rankings

Regional and national rankings are carried out in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania.

Asia

QS's Asian University Rankings use some of the same data as the QS World University Rankings alongside other material, such as the number of exchange students attending or traveling from each university. The rankings list the top 350 universities in Asia. Similarly, the ''THE'' Asia University Rankings "use the same 13 performance indicators as the THE World University Rankings, but they are recalibrated to reflect the attributes of Asia's institutions."

China

University rankings in China are ordered by different standards and made by various organizations, including: * BCUR, by Shanghai Jiao Tong University * Wu Shulian, published in the name of the

Chinese Academy of Management Science The Chinese Academy of Management Science (), is a research institute of management in Beijing, People's Republic of China. History On 1 September 1986, the communist paramount leader Chen Yun advised to set up the academy, and put Song Ping w ...

* Netbig, the higher education internet information company *

CUAA Concordia University Ann Arbor (CUAA) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a campus of Concordia University Wisconsin, a private Lutheran university in Mequon, Wisconsin. Its campus sits on the banks of the Huron River, about ten minutes outside downtow ...

, by Airuishen (a company) in the name of Chinese Universities Alumni Association, etc.

India

The

National Institutional Ranking Framework The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) is a methodology adopted by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, to rank institutions of higher education in India. The Framework was approved by the MHRD and launched by Minister ...

is initiated by the

Ministry of Human Resource Development The Ministry of Education ( MoE; formerly the Ministry of Human Resource Development from 1985 to 2020) is a Union Government ministries of India, ministry of the Government of India, responsible for the implementation of the National Policy on ...

of the

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

, to rank all

institutions of higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...

in India. Magazines such as ''Youth Incorporated Magazine'', ''

India Today ''India Today'' is a weekly Indian English-language news magazine published by Living Media India Limited. It is the most widely circulated magazine in India, with a readership of close to 8 million. In 2014, ''India Today'' launched a new on ...

'', ''

Outlook Outlook or The Outlook may refer to: Computing * Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft * Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...

'', ''

Mint MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaAE ...

'', ''

The Week ''The Week'' is a weekly news magazine with editions in the United Kingdom and United States. The British publication was founded in 1995 and the American edition in 2001. An Australian edition was published from 2008 to 2012. A children's edi ...

'', ''

Dataquest ''Dataquest'' is an Indian magazine focused on information technology related articles. The magazine is published monthly by Cyber Media India Ltd, South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geogr ...

'', '' Careers360'' and ''

Electronics For You ''Electronics For You'' magazine is India's first monthly publication for electronics engineers. It was first conceptualised at IIT Madras in 1969 by Ramesh Chopra, and was published by EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd headed by S.P Chopra and Veena K ...

'' conduct annual rankings for the major disciplines.

Japan

The Times Higher Education Supplement (The Thes) is publishing Japan University Rankings once a year, using a balanced scorecard approach, with 16 individual performance indicators combining to create an overall score that reflects the broad strength of an institution. Data for the rankings come from a variety of sources. These include self-submitted data from the institutions as well as data gathered from Elsevier,

Benesse Corporation is a Japanese company which focuses on correspondence education and publishing. Based in Okayama-City, it is the parent company of Berlitz Language Schools, which in turn is the parent company of ELS Language Centers. Benesse is listed on the ...

, Nikkei Human Resources, the Japanese government and the ''Times Higher Education'' Academic Reputation Survey. On the other hand, some of the ranking systems in Japan rank universities by the difficulty of their entrance exams, called " Hensachi". One example of such a ranking is

Going broke universities - Disappearing universities Going may refer to: *Go (verb) ** ''Going- to'' future, a construction in English grammar *Going (horse racing), the condition of a horse racing track surface. * Going (surname) *" Going!", a song by KAT-TUN *Way of going, a reference to the qualit ...

by Kiyoshi Shimano. In addition to this, there's the other example of rankigs using " Hensachi", GTZ. It is released by

and describes to which deviation value class (S1 to D3) each university belongs. Japanese preparatory school Kawaijuku also released the Japan's Top 30 University Rankings in Natural Sciences and Technology for

MEXT The , also known as MEXT or Monka-shō, is one of the eleven Ministries of Japan that composes part of the executive branch of the Government of Japan. Its goal is to improve the development of Japan in relation with the international communi ...

's GLOBAL 30 Project in 2001.

Pakistan

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

's Higher Education Commission annually ranks domestic universities.

Philippines

Academic rankings in the Philippines are conducted by the

Professional Regulation Commission The Professional Regulation Commission, ( fil, Komisyon sa Regulasyon ng mga Propesyon) otherwise known as the PRC, is a three-man commission attached to Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). Its mandate is to regulate and supervise the pr ...

and the Commission on Higher Education, based on accreditations, academic designations and the average passing rates in board tests.Vanzi, Sol Jose.
Xavier University Cagayan beats UP in State Tests Average
. ''Philippine Headline News Online''.29 March 2000.UP is no. 1 based on PRC exams
". ''UP Newsletter, Vol. XXVIII, No. 09''. 1 September 2007.

South Korea

Korean Council for University Education, established in 2009, evaluates universities in South Korea.

Europe

European Union

The

compiled a list of the 22 universities in the EU with the highest scientific impact. This ranking was compiled as part of the Third European Report on Science & Technology Indicators, prepared by the Directorate General for Science and Research of the European Commission in 2003 (updated 2004). It only explicitly considers the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

's top institutions, but comparisons with the rest of the world are provided in the full report. The report said, "University College London comes out on top in both publications (the number of scientific publications produced by the university) and citations (the number of times those scientific publications are cited by other researchers)" however the table lists the top scoring university as "Univ London" implying that the authors counted the scientific output of the entire

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...

, rather than its constituent colleges. In this ranking, the EU's top two universities were

and

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, as in the Jiao Tong and ''Times'' rankings. This ranking stresses the scientific quality of the institution, as opposed to its size or perceived prestige. Thus smaller, technical universities, such as

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,Technical University Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

(Germany) are ranked third and fourth, behind Cambridge, and followed by the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

. The report does not provide a direct comparison between EU and universities in the rest of the world, although it does compute a scientific impact score, which is measured against the world average. In December 2008, the European Commission published a call for tenders, inviting bidders to design and test a new multi-dimensional university ranking system with global outreach. The first results of the envisaged pilot project were promised for the first half of 2011. Another approach to classify the European research area is offered by 'European Research Ranking'. This ranking is based on publicly available data from the European Commissions project and funding database CORDIS to estimate the funding and networking performance of European research institutions.

Austria

Some Austrian universities, including all Austrian Universities of Applied Sciences, take part in the CHE University Ranking.

Bulgaria

The Bulgarian University Ranking System, maintained by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education, compares academic programs in accredited domestic higher education institutions. The system ranks programs based on more than 50 indicators, such as teaching and learning conditions, scientific research, career development opportunities, prestige, and material resources.

Denmark

In Denmark, the think-tank

CEPOS Centre for Political Studies, also known as CEPOS, is an independent association which works as a classical liberal/ free-market conservative think-tank in Denmark. It is a strongly right-leaning and highly political association. History Inspired ...

conduct an annual survey and ranking of higher education at study program level and institution level, based on entry salary, career development, drop-out rates, and program completion rates.

France

Eduniversal Eduniversal is a university ranking business by the French consulting company and rating agency ''SMBG'' specialized in Higher Education. Founded in 1994, one of the main goals of Eduniversal is to provide a tool, for students all around the world, ...

'' provides rankings of undergraduate and graduate degrees of French universities in some areas. ''

Le Nouvel Observateur (), previously known as (1964–2014), is a weekly French news magazine. Based in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, it is the most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation. Its current editor is Cécil ...

'' occasionally offer rankings of "''

Grandes écoles Grandes may refer to: *Agustín Muñoz Grandes Agustín Muñoz Grandes (27 January 1896 – 11 July 1970) was a Spanish general, and politician, vice-president of the Spanish Government and minister with Francisco Franco several times; also know ...

''" and their preparatory schools, the "''Prépas''", and of universities' undergraduate degrees in some areas.

Germany

Since 1998, the

Centre for Higher Education The Centre for Higher Education (CHE) (german: Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung) is a German organization dedicated to higher education reform. Founded in 1994 by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the German Rectors' Conference as a non-profit limit ...

(CHE) has published the

CHE University Ranking The ''CHE University Ranking'' (german: CHE Hochschulranking) is an annual ranking of German universities and colleges. It is a subject‐specific, multidimensional system aimed at providing information for students, with its main emphasis on te ...

, a comprehensive ranking of German and Austrian universities. The CHE also publishes a "ResearchRanking" showing the research strengths of German universities. The CHE ResearchRanking is based on the research-related data of the University Ranking.

Ireland

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' ranks Irish universities based on a mix of criteria, including secondary school examination scores, graduation rates, staff-student ratio, research efficiency, accommodation, nontraditional students, athletics and sports facilities.

Italy

Every year, the newspaper ''

La Repubblica ''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arno ...

'', in collaboration with CENSIS, compiles a ranking of Italian universities. Furthermore, the ministerial Agency for the Evaluation of University and Research (ANVUR) publishes every five years a detailed analysis regarding the entirety of the higher education institutions in the country, with a range of grades from D to A.

North Macedonia

The ''

'' (''ARWU'') compiled a ranking of Macedonian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) commissioned by the country's Ministry of Education and Science in February 2011 and released it on 16 February 2012. Nineteen qualified HEIs were included in the ranking. The ranking used 19 indicators of academic performance and competitiveness, covering major mission aspects of HEIs such as teaching, research and social service. It is the first university ranking in North Macedonia.

Netherlands

Most Dutch universities take part in the CHE UniversityRanking.

Poland

A popular ranking of Polish higher education institutions is annually published by education magazine ''Perspektywy''.

Romania

The Ad Astra association of Romanian scientists ranked Romanian universities in 2006 and 2007.

Russian Federation

Several bodies rank Russian universities, including

RIA Novosti RIA Novosti (russian: РИА Новости), sometimes referred to as RIAN () or RIA (russian: РИА, label=none) is a Russian state-owned domestic news agency. On 9 December 2013 by a decree of Vladimir Putin it was liquidated and its asset ...

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

, independent rating agency RatER,

Interfax Interfax (russian: Интерфакс) is a Russian news agency. The agency is owned by Interfax News Agency joint-stock company and is headquartered in Moscow. History As the first non-governmental channel of political and economic informat ...

(in cooperation with

Ekho Moskvy Echo of Moscow (russian: links=no, Эхо Москвы, translit=Ekho Moskvy) was a 24/7 commercial Russian radio station based in Moscow. It broadcast in many Russian cities, some of the former Soviet republics (through partnerships with local ra ...

) and the Russian journal ''Finance''. RIA Novosty / Forbes rankings are conducted under the supervision of

Public Chamber of Russia The Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation (russian: Общественная палата Российской Федерации), sometimes shortened to Civic Chamber (russian: Общественная палата), is a consultative civil s ...

in cooperation with State University – Higher School of Economics. This ranking is considered the most objective system. It covers 476 higher education institutions and is based on the average score of the Unified State Examination that is required to enter a university. The ranking has separate subrankings for different subjects and clusters of universities. RIA Novosty rankings do not align with other local and international rankings such as

and

which take into account inherited reputation from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. RatER publishes annual rankings based on representation of university graduates in governmental, education and business elite. Interfax annually ranks "classical" (or multi-faculty) universities and higher education institutions specialising in

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

. Interfax' methodology ''quantifies'' several ''qualitative'' factors such as research, teaching standards, public opinion and social and international activity. ''Finance'' produces an integrated ranking of higher education institutions specialising in economics and finance. The Journal uses the average score of the Unified State Examination, the number of

CFO The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

graduates and the consolidated turnover of companies where graduate CFOs are employed.

Spain

National rankings for

Spanish universities There are 76 universities in Spain, most of which are supported by state funding. 24 Spanish universities are private, of which 7 are affiliated with the Catholic Church. Former degrees were: *''Licenciatura'' or ''ingeniería'', can last four, fi ...

include the "50 carreras" (50 degrees) from the " El Mundo" newspaper, the CSIC or the IAIF ranking of the UCM.

Sweden

In Sweden, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) conduct an annual survey and ranking of higher education at study program level, based on entry salary, career development, internationalization, and degree of academic-business collaboration.

Switzerland

The swissUp Ranking ranked Swiss university and polytechnic students until 2004. The swissUp Ranking is no longer conducted. Some universities from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, such as ISFOA Lugano take part in the CHE UniversityRanking.

Turkey

The URAP Research Laboratory of the

assesses academic output of Turkish universities, as well as about 300 institutes of higher education worldwide. Their methodology focuses only on article and citation indicators in an attempt to minimize the impact of subjective data.

Ukraine

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

's Ministry of Education and Science performs official yearly university evaluations.

Zerkalo Nedeli ''Dzerkalo Tyzhnia'' ( ua, Дзеркало тижня), usually referred to in English as the ''Mirror Weekly'', was one of Ukraine's most influential analytical weekly-publisher newspapers, founded in 1994. Kyiv Student Council ranks universities on criteria of student satisfaction.

United Kingdom

There are three major rankings of universities in the United Kingdom published by commercial companies: ''The Times'' and ''Sunday Times'' Good University Guide, ''

The Complete University Guide Three national rankings of universities in the United Kingdom are published annually – by ''The Complete University Guide'', ''The Guardian'' and jointly by ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times''. Rankings have also been produced in the past ...

'' and ''

The Guardian University Guide Three national rankings of universities in the United Kingdom are published annually – by ''The Complete University Guide'', ''The Guardian'' and jointly by ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times''. Rankings have also been produced in the past ...

''. Since 2008, ''

'' has compiled a "Table of Tables" which combines the results of the 3 national league tables. For 2017, the top 5 universities were

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

, and

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

and

Durham University , mottoeng = Her foundations are upon the holy hills (Psalm 87:1) , established = (university status) , type = Public , academic_staff = 1,830 (2020) , administrative_staff = 2,640 (2018/19) , chancellor = Sir Thomas Allen , vice_chan ...

in joint fourth. The

Research Excellence Framework The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a research impact evaluation of British higher education institutions. It is the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise and it was first used in 2014 to assess the period 2008–2013. REF is underta ...

was the successor to the

Research Assessment Exercise The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was an exercise undertaken approximately every five years on behalf of the four UK higher education funding councils ( HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW, DELNI) to evaluate the quality of research undertaken by British h ...

in 2014. It is used by the UK government to evaluate the research quality of British universities and determine the distribution of future research funding. In 2014, the top five universities for research power as compiled by

Research Fortnight ''Research Fortnight'' is an independent publication that reports on research policy and funding in the UK. It is sold by institutional subscription; some 95% of universities in the UK subscribe to it, along with government agencies and researc ...

were

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

and

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

. The

s (RAE) were the UK government's evaluation of research quality in British Universities. Each subject, called a unit of assessment, was ranked by a peer review panel. The rankings were used in the allocation of government funding. The last assessment was made in 2008. The RAE provided quality ratings for research across all disciplines. Panels used a standard scale for each submission. Ratings ranged from 1 to 5, according to the quantity of work that was judged to reach national or international levels of excellence. Participating institutions receive grants from one of the four higher education funding bodies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The top three universities in the 2008 RAE exercise were

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

and

. The

Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) is the independent body that checks on standards and quality in UK higher education. It conducts quality assessment reviews, develops reference points and guidance for providers, and condu ...

(QAA) assesses undergraduate teaching. QAA is an independent body established by the UK's higher education institutions in 1997. QAA was under contract to the

Higher Education Funding Council for England The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom, which was responsible for the distribution of funding for higher education to universities and further education colleges in Engla ...

to assess quality for English universities. This replaced Teaching Quality Assessments (TQAs) which aimed to assess the administrative, policy and procedural framework within which teaching took place and did not directly assess teaching quality. This inspection-based system was replaced by a system of information provision, including a national student survey. QAA publishes scores which have been used by the

league table Standings or rankings are listings which compare sports teams or individuals, institutions, nations, companies, or other entities by ranking them in order of ability or achievement. A table or chart (such as a league table, a ladder or a leaderb ...

industry. The first

Teaching Excellence Framework The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) is a controversial government assessment of the quality of undergraduate teaching in universities and other higher education providers in England, which may be used from 2020 to determine ...

is to be published in 2017; this is a rating system (giving gold, silver or bronze ratings to higher education providers) rather than a ranking as such.

North America

Canada

''Maclean's'', a Canadian news magazine, publishes an annual ranking of Canadian universities, called the Maclean's#Guide to Canadian Universities, Maclean's University Rankings. Ranking criteria include student body characteristics, classes, faculty, finances, library, and reputation. The rankings are split into three categories: schools that focus on undergraduate studies with few to no graduate programs, schools that have both extensive undergraduate studies and an extensive selection of graduate programs and schools that have a professional medical program and a selection of graduate programs. The University of Calgary produced a formal study examining the ranking methodology, illuminating the factors that determined its rank and criticizing certain aspects of the methodology. The University of Alberta, the University of Toronto and University of Manitoba have expressed displeasure over the ranking system. A notable difference between rankings in the United States and ''Maclean's'' rankings, however, is that ''Maclean's'' excludes privately funded universities. However, the majority of Canada's institutions, including the best-known, are publicly funded. Beginning in September 2006, over 20 Canadian universities, including several of the most prestigious and largest universities such as the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, Concordia University (Quebec), Concordia University, McMaster University and Dalhousie University, jointly refused to participate. University of Alberta president Indira Samarasekera wrote that ''Maclean's'' initially filed a "Freedom of information in Canada, Freedom of Information" request but that it was "too late" for the universities to respond. Samarasekera further stated, "Most of [the universities] had already posted the data online, and we directed ''Maclean's'' staff to our Web sites. In instances where the magazine staff couldn't find data on our Web site, they chose to use the previous year's data."

Mexico

=Estudio Comparativo de Universidades Mexicanas

= Mexican institutions have been compared in the ''Estudio Comparativo de Universidades Mexicanas'' (ECUM) produced within the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). ECUM provides data on institutional participation in articles on ISI Web of Knowledge–indexed journals; faculty participation in each of Mexico's three-level National Researchers System (SNI); graduate degrees within National Council of Science and Technology's (CONACYT) register of quality graduate programs; and number of academic research bodies (''cuerpos academicos'') according to the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) program PROMEP. ECUM provides online access to data for 2007 and 2008 through ExECUM. Institutional data can be visualized through three options: * A selection of the most prominent 58 universities (43 publics and 13 privates). This selection accounts for more than 60 percent of undergraduate and graduate enrollments. It includes public federal universities (UNAM, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, National Pedagogic University (Mexico), Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Universidad del Ejército y la Fuerza Aérea, Colegio de México, Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, Universidad Autónoma Agraria Antonio Narro); 35 public state universities (UPES), and a group of private institutions that feature within ECUM's selected classification data. * Result tables for the top 20 institutions in each of the data labels in this study. These include some of the selected universities in addition to the rest of Mexico's higher education institutions, as well as institutes, centers and other research producing organizations. * A personalized selection from more than 600 institutions. These are classified by institutional type, institutional gatherings, by activity sector alphabetically. ExECUM allows users to establish comparison types and levels which they consider relevant. Data is presented in raw form with virtually no derived indicators. Users can relate variables and build indicators according to their own analytical perspectives. Based on this comparative study project, ECUM's creator, the Dirección General de Evaluación Institucional, published reports providing an analysis of the data for 2007 and 2008.

United States

Oceania

Australia

The Good Universities Guide and Excellence in Research for Australia annually rank domestic universities.

South America

QS University Rankings: Latin America

QS Quacquarelli Symonds, in addition to their QS World University Rankings, publish an annual ranking of the top 300 universities in Latin America. The eighth instalment, released for the 2016/17 academic year, places the Universidade de São Paulo as the region's best university.

Argentina

In Argentina the National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation ranks higher education programs by evaluation and accreditation.

Brazil

The latest ranking, th
Ranking Universitário Folha (RUF)
website (in Portuguese), was created by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. This ranking is based on the combination of four indicators: education quality, research quality, market assessment and an innovation indicator.

Chile

In Chile the "Comisión Nacional de Acreditación" (National Commission of Accreditation of the Universities) manages evaluation and accreditation. It also ranks universities according to accreditation levels. Other commercial rankings are made by research magazines, including ''Qué Pasa (magazine), Qué Pasa'' and ''América Economía''. ''Qué Pasa's'' ranking evaluates perception and quality following surveys of approximately 1,000 employers across the country. ''América Economía'' ranking considers quality of students, quality of teachers, rating of professors by student, research productivity, internationalization, integration with the community, student life quality and inclusion of students from lower social strata.

Criticism

Critics argue that rankings can divert universities' attention away from teaching and social responsibility towards the type of scientific research valued by indicators used for ranking exercises. There have also been concerns that by applying a limited set of criteria to world universities, and given the strong desire to feature in the top 200 universities, rankings actually encourage the homogenization of higher education institutions, making them less responsive and less relevant to their immediate contexts. The fact that rankings are also said to favour the advantage enjoyed by the 200 best-ranked institutions has important implications for equity.

Sources

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:College And University Rankings University and college rankings,

Global rankings

Major international rankings

QS World University Rankings

Times Higher Education World University Rankings

Academic Ranking of World Universities

Other global rankings

Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities

Center for World University Rankings

Leiden Ranking

Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities

Reuters World's Top 100 Innovative Universities

Round University Ranking

SCImago Institutions Rankings

U-Multirank

University Ranking by Academic Performance

U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities Rankings

Webometrics

The Three University Missions

Specific rankings

Eduniversal

Human Resources & Labor Review

Nature Index

Professional Ranking of World Universities

Defunct rankings

G-factor

Global University Ranking

High Impact Universities: Research Performance Index

Newsweek

Regional and national rankings

Asia

China

India

Japan

Pakistan

Philippines

South Korea

Europe

European Union

Austria

Bulgaria

Denmark

France

Germany

Ireland

Italy

North Macedonia

Netherlands

Poland

Romania

Russian Federation

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Turkey

Ukraine

United Kingdom

North America

Canada

Mexico

=Estudio Comparativo de Universidades Mexicanas

United States

Oceania

Australia

South America

QS University Rankings: Latin America

Argentina

Brazil

Chile

Criticism

See also

Sources

Notes and references