The Global Rankings of 2024: Worldwide by QS, Featuring MIT and Five European Powerhouses

The latest QS World University Rankings for 2024 reaffirms the dominance of European and American universities, with European institutions claiming half of the top 10 positions, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) maintaining its top position for the 12th consecutive year.

The 20th edition of the QS World University Rankings evaluates 1,500 universities in 104 different locations and stands out as the sole ranking that emphasizes employability and sustainability, according to Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a leading higher education specialist.

For this year’s rankings, the organization has introduced three new metrics: Sustainability, Employment Outcomes, and International Research Network.

The results are based on the analysis of 17.5 million academic papers and the insights of over 240,000 academic faculty and employers from around the world.

Following MIT, which secured the #1 ranking with a perfect overall score of 100, the University of Cambridge maintained its #2 position with 99.2 points, while the University of Oxford climbed to third place with 98.9 points, moving up one spot from the previous year.

Harvard University claimed the fourth spot with a score of 98.3, followed by Stanford University at fifth place with 98.1 points.

As with other prominent rankings, English-speaking universities dominate the upper echelons, earning perfect scores in categories such as academic reputation, employer reputation, and faculty/student ratio, notes Euronews.

The latest global university rankings indicate a shift in the global higher education landscape, with more institutions from around the world making their mark on lists that traditionally favored American universities.

In this year's top ten rankings, Imperial College London secured the #6 position, followed by ETH Zurich at #7, the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a new entry at #8, and UCL London at #9.

Nevertheless, the subsequent five positions in the QS list are primarily occupied by U.S. institutions, with the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) also as a new entry at #10, followed by the University of Chicago at #11, the University of Pennsylvania at #12, Cornell University at #13, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) at #15.

UC Berkeley is the only institution to achieve a perfect score of 100 in the new 'Sustainability' indicator, closely followed by the University of Pennsylvania at #12, the University of Toronto at #21, and the University of British Columbia at #34.

This year's rankings feature 85 new entrants, with NUS and UCB among the top ten. More than half of the newly-ranked institutions are in Asia, including 11 from Bangladesh, 10 from Indonesia, five from India, five from Malaysia, and four from Kazakhstan.

Here are the top 10 universities according to the QS World University Rankings 2024:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

2. University of Cambridge

3. University of Oxford

4. Harvard University

5. Stanford University

6. Imperial College London

7. ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

8. National University of Singapore (NUS)

9. University College London (UCL)

10. University of California, Berkeley (UCB)

For the full results of the QS World University Rankings 2024, please refer to the official publication.