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 |