Study Abroad: THE releases World University Rankings 2025; Know Details Here

Times Higher Education has released the World University Rankings 2025 and Oxford University continues to be in the top position for the ninth consecutive year.

Times Higher Education's World University Rankings 2025 list is released. Oxford University remains at the top position for the ninth consecutive year. MIT climbed to second place, it is positioned higher than Stanford which has now dropped to the sixth position.

The latest ranking also hints at the decreasing popularity of Australia's universities thanks to the declining international outlook and reputation. Merlin Crossley, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, is hoping that Australia will recover its rankings.

“In the last 15 years, Australian universities have shone on the world stage. Our top institutions have bounced back after Covid and the rapid return of international students is temporarily throwing out some of the ratios and reducing our scores, though the actual quality in our system has been sustained,” he says.

“I’m optimistic that the momentum to invest in staff and research will continue in Australia and we’ll keep up with our impressive Asian neighbours,” added Merlin Crossley.

In the top 200 of the World University Rankings 2025, three more countries have made their entries, these are Saudi Arabia, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates. These new entries also highlight the increase in the emerging markets in higher education.

World University Rankings 2025: List of Top 10 Universities

Following are the top universities in the world as per the latest rankings:

2025 rank	Institution	Country/region
1	University of Oxford	UK
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	US
3	Harvard University	US
4	Princeton University	US
5	University of Cambridge	UK
6	Stanford University	US
7	California Institute of Technology	US
8	University of California, Berkeley	US
9	Imperial College London	UK
10	Yale University	US

World University Rankings 2025: More Details

While US and UK universities have made their dominance in the top positions, however, the UK's teaching reputation has declined by 3% in the last three years and its reputation in research has also dropped by 5%, as reported by THE.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is now the top-ranked US university. MIT and Princeton have continued to improve their rankings since 2016. US representative has also slightly improved. This year 38 colleges are in the top 100, it was 36 last year.

Irene Tracey, Oxford’s vice-chancellor commented on this and said, "UK’s declining reputation was her biggest concern for the future of the sector, along with the current financial crisis. This matters more than maybe people realise. We’ve got to be really mindful of that and mindful of the decisions that need to be taken now in order to address that slippage,” she said, adding that it was important that the UK “has a good slug of our universities in that top batch” of global league tables."

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said, "The decline in teaching reputation was down to underfunding. When you underfund university teaching, as we have been doing, the result is often worse staff-to-student ratios, problems with marking and evaluation and inadequate contact hours or class sizes. If you do this while other countries take the opposite route, your relative position is bound to deteriorate."

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