Education
QS World Universities Rankings 2021

LONDON, June 9, 2020 QS Quacquarelli Symonds, global higher education analysts, published the 17th edition of the QS World University Rankings – the world’s most-consulted, most-covered source of comparative information about university performance. 26 Asian universities place among the global top-100 – the highest number ever.
Important points related to QS World Universities:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology is named the world’s best university for a record-breaking ninth consecutive year;
- The top three institutions remain American: MIT is followed by Stanford University (2nd) and Harvard University (3rd);
- Britain’s top institution is the University of Oxford, which falls to fifth. Its compatriot competitor, the University of Cambridge, remains 7th;
- 112 of America’s 153 ranked universities fall, with only 34 recording improvements. This is primarily due to collective relative decline in QS’s measures of academic standing and research impact;
- Continental Europe’s best university is ETH Zurich (6th no-change);
- Asia’s top university is the National University of Singapore (11th);
- China’s Tsinghua University reaches a new all-time high (15th);
- Latin America’s leader is the Universidad de Buenos Aires (66th, up 8 places). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (100th) becomes the first Mexican university ever to achieve a top-100 place;
- Universities in Russia and Malaysia continue to rise: Lomonosov Moscow State University (74th) and Universiti Malaya (59th) reach record highs.
The American higher education hegemony continues to diminish in the face of increasing competitiveness across the world: competitiveness driven by strategic funding, internationalization efforts, and strong links between education and industry.
Ben Sowter
(QS Director of Research)
List of top 20 Universities in QS World Rankings 2021
2021 | 2020 | ||
1 | 1 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | USA |
2 | 2 | Stanford University | USA |
3 | 3 | Harvard University | USA |
4 | 5 | California Institute of Technology | USA |
5 | 4 | University of Oxford | UK |
6 | 6 | ETH Zurich | Switzerland |
7 | 7 | University of Cambridge | UK |
8 | 9 | Imperial College London | UK |
9 | 10 | University of Chicago | USA |
10 | 8 | University College London | UK |
11 | 11= | National University of Singapore | Singapore |
12 | 13 | Princeton University | USA |
13 | 11= | Nanyang Technological University (NTU) | Singapore |
14 | 18= | Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) | Switzerland |
15 | 16 | Tsinghua University | China (Mainland) |
16 | 15 | University of Pennsylvania | USA |
17 | 17 | Yale University | USA |
18 | 14 | Cornell University | USA |
19 | 18= | Columbia University | USA |
20 | 20 | University of Edinburgh | UK |
Pakistan’s Universities QS Rankings 2021
No. | University | QS Rankings 2021 |
1 | National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) | 355 |
2 | Pakistan Institute of Engineering & Applied Sciences (PIEAS) | 373 |
3 | Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad | 454 |
4 | Lahore University of Management Sciences, (LUMS) | 651-700 |
5 | COMSATS University, Lahore | 801-1000 |
6 | University of Engineering & Technology Lahore. | 801-1000 |
7 | University of the Punjab, Lahore. | 801-1000 |