The University of Oxford has yet again emerged as the top university in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025. The university retained its top position for a ninth year in a row.
As per the official website of THE Rankings 2025, “The institution’s performance has been bolstered by significant improvements in its income from industry and the number of patents that cite its research, as well as its teaching scores.”
Ranking at the second spot, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is now the highest-ranked university in the US. It replaced Stanford University, which has dropped from second to sixth place, its lowest position since 2010. The downfall in the scores of Stanford is driven by declining scores for teaching, research environment and international outlook, the official website mentioned.
Harvard University has moved from fourth to third place, and Princeton University from sixth to fourth.Â
While the top of the ranking is still dominated by US and UK institutions, both countries are seeing a rapid decline in their average research and teaching reputation.
The UK’s teaching reputation has dropped by 3 per cent since last year and research reputation by 5 per cent, based on more than 93,000 responses to THE’s Academic Reputation Survey, in which academics choose up to 15 institutions they believe excel in teaching and, separately, research.
UK institutions now take 13 per cent of the share of votes for teaching and 12.8 per cent for research, representing a steady decline over the past decade from 18.9 per cent and 18.1 per cent respectively.
The reputation of the US sector is also falling. In the past year alone, there has been a 4 per cent drop in the country’s share of votes for teaching and a 3 per cent drop for research.Â
US institutions now take 36.3 per cent of the share of votes for teaching and 38.1 per cent for research, down from 44.2 and 46.5 per cent respectively in 2015, with the biggest drop occurring in the past five years.
World University Rankings 2025: Top 10 Universities
University of OxfordMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyHarvard UniversityPrinceton UniversityUniversity of CambridgeStanford UniversityCalifornia Institute of TechnologyUniversity of California, BerkeleyImperial College LondonYale University
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