By Ruth A Pagell*
- What else is new at THE?
- What changes has CWTS Leiden made?
- Do the Human Freedom rankings affect university rankings?
- What is the number one university in the world?
(12 Feb 2026) 2025 was a difficult year to write about rankings from a U.S. perspective for a non-U.S. audience. Who is number one? If it is Harvard, Oxford, MIT, or Zhejiang became trivial in the chaos created over research funding and international students.
After spending the past few months trying to keep up to-date on the fate of U.S. universities, I am looking forward to writing about the rankings I have missed. I know rankings are not perfect. They are dependent on what can be measured and on the biases of the ranking organizations. What makes a good university varies on the needs of the user.
Ruth’s Rankings for January provides brief updates to the major rankings organizations, Times Higher Education (THE), QS, ARWU (ShanghaiRanking Academic Ranking of World Universities), and US News Best Global Universities are considered the primary multi-purpose international rankings. The CWTS Leiden Traditional and Open Rankings are my recommendations for researchers interested in publication bibliometrics. They will be discussed in Part 2.
TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION
I cannot get away from THE’s updated rankings. Starting in October, THE released its World Rankings, its Interdisciplinary rankings, and regional rankings for Arab and Latin America Universities 2026. The regional names were slightly modified from the 2025 editions because the data are now taken directly from the World Rankings. The methodology has been modified to meet the priorities of the different regions. Updated Asian rankings will be released and reviewed in 2026.
THE World Rankings 2026: The number of ranked universities grew from 200 in the first version in 2004, released jointly with QS to 3117 in the 2026 version. The number of countries grew from 26 to115. The world’s top ten universities in THE’s 2026 world rankings are the same as the top 10 in the first online version in 2010-2011, the year it split from QS, and nine of the top ten are the same as the first edition.
Arab University World Rankings: No Arab university was in the 2004 rankings. There were two middle eastern universities, both from Israel. The first Arab ranking, covering 14 countries, was in 2021 with 125 ranked universities and 30 unranked reporters 1. The 2026 release has 20 countries and a total of 372 institutions. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has been number one in the rankings for three years. It is listed as a reporter in the World Rankings.
Latin America World University Rankings
There was one Latin American university in the 2004 World Ranking, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The University of São Paulo Brazil was number one in the first Latin America ranking in 2016 regional rankings out of 50 universities and number one of 250 in the 2026 regional rankings.
There is a consistency in the top universities in the world between 2004 and 2026. See Table 1 in the Appendix below.
THE Interdisciplinary Rankings: Interdisciplinary rankings were introduced in Ruth’s Rankings 63. The 2025 rankings included 749 institutions from 92 countries while the 2026 version includes 911 institutions from 94 countries.
Even after writing the article and listening to THE‘s Interdisciplinary Science Rankings 2026 Masterclass, I was still confused. Based on the number of follow-up questions so were the other listeners. After many emails, I finally received the following which explains the definition below used by THE and Schmidt Science Fellows.
| Interdisciplinary science refers to the integration of both the knowledge, traditions, and processes from multiple scientific disciplines. It can involve multiple academics who collaborate with one another across different disciplines. It may also be a single academic approaching a scientific question across multiple disciplines. It is not therefore simply based on a mix of researchers from different departments working on the same project.
For the evidence and survey data, we are looking at interdisciplinarity within an institution. (THE World Universities Insights Support Team) |
A recent article from Emory University, where I am affiliated from a 5000 kilometer distance, featured Interdisciplinary Studies as an undergraduate major. Run through the Institute of Liberal Arts, students create their own programs. THE ‘s section targeting student readers mentions that universities offer courses in interdisciplinary sciences, different from Emory’s approach.
I will be unable to ignore THE in 2026, with its new approach to its impact rankings.
NOTE 1: Universities that have submitted data but do not meet all the criteria for a rank are listed as Reporters.
THE Rankings URLs:
World: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/latest/world-ranking
Arab University Rankings 2026: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2026/arab-university-rankings
Latin American University Rankings 2026: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/latin-america-university-rankings-2026-methodology
Interdisciplinary Science Rankings 2026: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/interdisciplinary-science-rankings
Bhardwa, S. (20 Nov 2025). What are interdisciplinary sciences? https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/advice/what-are-interdisciplinary-sciences
Appendix: COMPARING TOP UNIVERSITIES: THE, QS, ARWU, and US NEWS GLOBAL
Times Higher Education, QS, ARWU (Academic Ranking of World Universities), and US News Global are considered the major rankings. THE and QS use the upcoming year in the name of their rankings. For example, this is THE World University Rankings, 2026. Rankings, such as CWTS Leiden, only include bibliometrics and will be highlighted in Part 2.
Table 1 compares the top ten universities in the world in the four major rankings that were released in 2025. Also included is the original THE-QS 2004 print ranking (Praphamontripong). Nine of the top ten universities are the same as the top ten of THE-QS rankings of 2004 which ranked 200 universities. Despite the participation of thousands of ranked universities there are only thirteen unique universities in the current world’s top ten as displayed in Table 1.
There is consistency for each of the four rankings. ARWU was the first global ranking with 200 universities ranked in 2003. Nine of the top ten are the same today with Harvard still as number one. Oxford has been number one in THE rankings since 2017. Harvard was number one in the first THE-QS rankings in 2004 and 6th in the first online ranking in 2017.
Table 2 compares the top ten Asian universities .
This cycle’s THE’s Asia university ranking will be published in 2026. It will include Asian universities listed in the 2026 World Rankings. QS has a separate Asia rankings including universities not in the world rankings. Users are able to search for Asian universities in the US News rankings. Only current year’s rankings are available. ARWU does not have separate Asian ranking. Metrics from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are included in its Chinese rankings. They are also listed separately.
Two different Asian universities are in the top 10 for the current rankings, Tsinghua and National University of Singapore. Five of the top 10 universities in the 2004 rankings are in the top ten for THE 2026. The two highlighted universities in Table 2 below are in none of the current top 10 lists.
A more detailed examination of a variety of Asian rankings will be featured in the spring release of THE’s Asian Rankings. Part 2 will answer the questions at the start of this release.
Data Sources
ARWU 2025 Academic Ranking of World Universities. https://www.shanghairanking.com/
Praphamontripong, P. & Levy, D. (2004) International Data/WorldUniversityRanking 2004_ModifiedFromTHES.pdf -no longer available
QS World University Rankings 2026: Top global universities. https://www.topuniversities.com/world-university-rankings
THE World University Rankings 2026 https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-universityrankings/latest/world-ranking
US News Best Global Universities https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/search
By Ruth A Pagell*
Ruth’s Rankings
A list of Ruth’s Rankings and News Updates is here.
*Ruth A. Pagell is emeritus faculty librarian at Emory University. After working at Emory, she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University and then adjunct faculty [teaching] in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. She has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of librarianship, including contributing articles to ACCESS – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3238-9674
