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The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education (formerly the Institute of Higher Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and updated on an annual basis. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence and not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies. ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded™ and Social Sciences Citation Index™ in the Web of Science™, and per capita performance of a university. More than 2500 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 1000 are published.(Methodology)

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 include 1,906 universities across 108 countries and regions.

The table is based on our new WUR 3.0 methodology, which includes 18 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.

This year’s ranking analysed more than 134 million citations across 16.5 million research publications and included survey responses from 68,402 scholars globally. Overall, we collected 411,789 datapoints from more than 2,673 institutions that submitted data.

Trusted worldwide by students, teachers, governments and industry experts, the 2024 league table reveals how the global higher education landscape is shifting.

View the World University Rankings 2024 methodology

The University of Oxford tops the ranking for the eighth year in a row, but others in the top five have seen shifts in their ranks. Stanford University moves up to second place, pushing Harvard University down to fourth.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) climbs up two places to third this year. The University of Cambridge slips to fifth place, after being in joint third place last year.

The highest new entry is Italy’s Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, ranked in the 301-350 bracket. However, the majority of the institutions joining the ranking for the first time this year are in Asia.

The US is the most-represented country overall, with 169 institutions, and also the most-represented in the top 200 (56). With 91 institutions, India is now the fourth most-represented nation, overtaking China (86).

Four countries enter the ranking for the first time – all of them in Europe. The addition of Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Armenia is in contrast to last year’s trend when all the new entrants were from Africa.

Stanford University leads the teaching pillar, while the universities of Oxford and Cambridge come top for research environment. The research quality pillar, which is the newly renamed citations pillar, sees MIT in first place.

The University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates scores highest in international outlook, while 28 institutions receive a top score of 100 for the industry pillar.

In addition to the 1,904 ranked institutions, a further 769 universities are listed with “reporter” status, meaning that they provided data but did not meet our eligibility criteria to receive a rank, and agreed to be displayed as a reporter in the final table.

Read our analysis of the World University Rankings 2024 results

Download a copy of the World University Rankings 2024 digital report

To raise your university’s global profile with Times Higher Education, contact [email protected]

To unlock the data behind THE’s rankings and access a range of analytical and benchmarking tools, click here

This year’s QS World University Rankings include almost 1,500 institutions from around the world. It’s not just iconic institutions that take the top spots: this year’s highest rankings include universities from diverse locations across Europe, Asia and North America.

Our rankings are the fast and easy way to compare institutions on a host of different criteria: from academic reputation to the number of international students enrolled. You’ll find even more information about each university on their dedicated QS profile page, where you can explore the full range of study options available and enquire with their admissions team.

Share your opinion of this year’s results and join the

QSWUR conversation onLinkedIn and Weibo.

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