World’s top universities in 2024 revealed: 5 of the top 10 are in Europe
The QS World University Rankings 2024 have been unveiled, with Europe claiming half of the top 10 spots.
The annual assessment, now in its 20th edition, is based on the analysis of 17.5 million academic papers and the expert opinions of more than 240,000 professors and employers worldwide.
Europe occupies five of the top ten places, while English-speaking universities dominate the upper echelons of the rankings with perfect scores in categories such as academic reputation, employer reputation and faculty/student ratio.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge (USA) secured the top spot with an impeccable overall score of 100 for the 12th consecutive year.
Cambridge University in the United Kingdom followed closely behind, claiming second place with 99.2 points, while local rival Oxford University secured third place with 98.9 points.
Harvard University took fourth place with a score of 98.3, and Stanford University ranked fifth with 98.1 points.
In Europe, the top 10 universities for 2024 are Cambridge University (99.2), second worldwide; Oxford University (98.9), third worldwide; Imperial College London (97.8), sixth worldwide; ETH Zurich (93.9), seventh worldwide; and University College London (92.4), ninth worldwide.
On the European continent, the University of Edinburgh (UK) ranks sixth (86.1), followed by the PSL University of Paris (France) (85.8), the University of Manchester (82.2), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) (Switzerland) (80.4) and the Technical University of Munich (Germany) (80).
The overall score of the prestigious ranking is reached by taking into account nine crucial metrics: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio, international student ratio and, for the first time this year, international research network, employment outcome and sustainability.
The new indicators “reflect the changes that have taken place in higher education over the past two decades, such as the growing importance of sustainability, employability and research collaborations,” says Quacquarelli Symonds, the analysis company behind the rankings.
What trends does the ranking show?
Higher education has undergone significant changes over the past two decades.
“One of the first changes we saw [in the last few decades] was the growing interest of students in employability,” says Andrew MacFarlane, director of the QS rankings, who adds that this led them to strengthen the emphasis on employability.
“Students are leaving [university] more indebted than ever in a really competitive global job market,” he said.
As the ranking celebrates its 20th anniversary, one trend they are “immensely proud of is the increasing inclusivity of our rankings, which illuminates the global distribution of academic excellence.”
Between 2018 and the 2024 edition, there has been a significant increase in the representation of Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern and African universities in the World University Rankings. In 2018, these regions accounted for 37% of the rankings; in 2024, the figure has grown to 46%.
China is becoming a research hub.
China, in particular, has seen a marked rise in the rankings, driven by research efforts, MacFarlane noted.
“They are the world’s largest producer of research, but increasingly also of highly cited research,” he told Euronews Next, meaning that the quality of research being done in China has really “moved them up” in the rankings.
Meanwhile, the United States and the United Kingdom, which have traditionally performed well, have seen a slight drop in their rankings, but this drop does not necessarily mean they are getting worse. It is also an indicator that other institutions around the world are improving and closing the gap, says MacFarlane.
“The fastest runner is still the fastest runner, but someone else is closing the gap,” he explains.
EU universities continue to excel in internationalization metrics
Globally, European universities continue to excel in their global engagement, something fundamental according to MacFarlane: “To overcome the world’s challenges, we will have to work across borders, solve challenges together and be more transparent. And it is Europe that is really leading the way in this regard.”
Among the EU institutions that have demonstrated their strength in international research collaboration are the PSL University of Paris (Université des Sciences et des Lettres de Paris), third in the “international research networks” category, the Sorbonne (fourth), the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Ghent in Belgium (sixth and eighth respectively), and the University of Montpellier in France (ninth).
“East Asia may be seeing an increasing dominance in the volume of collaborative research and international engagement,” McFarlane noted, “but Europe shines much brighter here.”