The Best Global Universities ranking by U.S. News & World Report is an annual ranking of world universities. On October 28, 2014, U.S. News, which began ranking American universities in 1983, published its inaugural global ranking, assessing 500 universities in 49 countries. That first installment of the Best Global Universities Ranking was published without prior announcement, with U.S. News later clarifying that the rankings of that year were a trial balloon for the publication's entrance into the global university rankings field. After pre-announcing the rankings of next year, in 2016, the periodical formalized the global university rankings as part of its regular annual programming. Having made official the ranking methodology, it disclosed that it is based on 10 different indicators that measure universities' academic performance and reputations. [1] The ranking has since been revised and expanded to cover 1,500 institutions in 81 countries and now includes five regional and 28 subject rankings. [2] Employing 13 indicators and based largely on data provided by Clarivate, the U.S. News global ranking is methodologically different from its ranking of American institutions; global universities are rated using factors such as research reputation, academic publications, and the number of highly cited papers. [3] [4]
Inside Higher Ed noted in 2014 that U.S. News is entering the international college and university rankings area that is already "dominated by three major global university rankings": the QS World University Rankings , the Times Higher Education World University Rankings , and the Academic Ranking of World Universities . [5] 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." [5] Morse pointed out that U.S. News is "the first American publisher to enter the global rankings space", given Times Higher Education and QS are both British, while the Academic Ranking of World Universities is Chinese. [5]
The Washington Post noted that some U.S. institutions rank lower on U.S. News' global ranking than on their domestic ranking, in particular Princeton, which was named the top university in the U.S. in the 2015 domestic ranking but was ranked behind nine other U.S. universities (and three U.K. universities) in the 2015 global ranking. This was attributed to the global ranking concentrating on "research prowess", while the "undergraduate experience", for which uniform international data is hard to obtain, was not included. [6] Forbes , which, along with many others, has roundly criticized the U.S. News ranking of American colleges, [7] praised the U.S. News global ranking as being mostly based upon "objective measures" and representing a "worthy" evaluation scheme. [8]
As of U.S. News & World Report 's most recent 2024-2025 rankings, which considered 2,250 institutions from over 100 countries using 13 indicators that "measure their academic research performance and their global and regional reputations", [9] the top ten universities are:
Peking University (PKU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. It is also a member in the C9 League.
East China Normal University (ECNU) is a public university in Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education and co-funded with the Shanghai Municipal People's Government. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction.
College and university rankings order higher education institutions based on various criteria, with factors differing depending on the specific ranking system. These rankings can be conducted at the national or international level, assessing institutions within a single country, within a specific geographical region, or worldwide. Rankings are typically conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academics.
Beijing Normal University (BNU) is a public university in Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China, and co-funded by the Ministry of Education and the Beijing Municipal People's Government. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction.
The University of Science and Technology Beijing is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211 and the Double First-Class Construction. The university was formerly known as Beijing Steel and Iron Institute (北京钢铁学院) before 1988.
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 in 2003, making it the first global university ranking with multifarious indicators.
National Research Nuclear University MEPhI is a public technical university in Moscow, Russia. It was founded in 1942 as the Moscow Mechanical Institute of Munitions, but was soon renamed the Moscow Mechanical Institute. Its original mission was to train skilled personnel for the Soviet military and Soviet atomic bomb project. It was renamed the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1953, which was its name until 2009.
Curtin University Malaysia is the Malaysian campus of Curtin University, a public university based in Australia. It is the university's largest campus outside of Australia with a total area of 1,200-hectare (3,000-acre) comprising academic and residential blocks. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programs in various fields of commerce, engineering, computational sciences, humanities and health sciences. It also offers foundational courses and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) among other higher degree by research programs. It is named after John Curtin, a prominent Prime Minister of Australia during World War II from 1941 to 1945.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, often referred to as the THE Rankings, is the annual publication of university rankings by the Times Higher Education magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) to publish the joint THE-QS World University Rankings from 2004 to 2009 before it turned to Thomson Reuters for a new ranking system from 2010 to 2013. In 2014, the magazine signed an agreement with Elsevier to provide it with the data used in compiling its annual rankings.
The QS World University Rankings is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with Times Higher Education (THE) magazine as Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings, inaugurated in 2004 to provide an independent source of comparative data about university performance. In 2009, the two organizations parted ways to produce independent university rankings, the QS World University Rankings and THE World University Rankings.
Nanjing University (NJU) is a public university in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. It is affiliated and sponsored by the Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. The university is a member of the C9 League.
College and university rankings in the United States order the best U.S. colleges and universities based on factors that vary depending on the ranking. Rankings are typically conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academics. In addition to ranking entire institutions, specific programs, departments, and schools can be ranked. Some rankings consider measures of wealth, excellence in research, selective admissions, and alumni success. There is also much debate about rankings' interpretation, accuracy, and usefulness.
Rankings of universities in Canada are typically published annually by a variety of nationally, and internationally based publications. Rankings of post-secondary institutions have most often been conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academia. Ranking are established to help inform potential applicants about universities in Canada based on a range of criteria, including student body characteristics, classes, faculty, finances, library, and reputation. Various rankings consider combinations of factors, including funding and endowment, research excellence and/or influence, specialization expertise, admissions, student options, award numbers, internationalization, graduate employment, industrial linkage, historical reputation and other criteria. Various rankings also evaluate universities based on research output.
Curtin Mauritius is the Mauritian campus of Curtin University, a public university in Australia. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs in healthcare, information technology, commerce, design and communications. Curtin University is named after John Curtin, a prominent Prime Minister of Australia during World War II from 1941 to 1945, and is the largest university in the state of Western Australia with 58,607 students globally in 2022. It is the only Australian university campus in Africa and was formally opened on 3 May 2018 by Pravind Jugnauth, the prime minister of Mauritius.
The University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) is a university ranking developed by 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.
Universities in Malaysia are ranked in a number of ways, including both national and international ranks.
This article presents an overview of university rankings in Pakistan. Within Pakistan, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) provides official rankings of higher education institutions (HEIs) nationally, based on a multitude of criteria. There are also various magazines, newspapers and international agencies/standards which provide rankings and analysis.
U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking is an annual set of rankings of colleges and universities in the United States, which was first published by U.S. News & World Report in 1983. It has been described as the most influential institutional ranking in the country.
As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities in several most cited international rankings including the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities and the Three University Missions Ranking.