U of T ranks top 25 in Times Higher Education World University Rankings
For the second year in a row, the University of Toronto ranks twenty-first among 2025 World University Rankings—the only Canadian University in the top 40.
The University of Toronto (U of T) has maintained its position as a leading global academic institution after being placed twenty-first for the second year in a row in the 2025 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings list—with 185 new entries compared to last year. While U of T maintained its twenty-first ranking for another year, the university ranked eighteenth in 2023 and 2022.
Among the list—which ranked more than 2,000 institutions from 155 countries and territories—U of T placed in the top ten for the subject areas of Clinical and Health, Education, and Psychology and ranked third and tenth among public universities in North America and globally, respectively.
The United Kingdom’s University of Oxford ranked first for the ninth consecutive year. According to THE, the university was “bolstered by significant improvements in industry engagement and teaching” for the 2025 ranking. Followed by Oxford are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Princeton University, and the University of Cambridge, filling places two to five, respectively.
While institutions in the US and the United Kingdom dominated the ranking’s top positions, THE noted that both countries are experiencing a decline in their average research and teaching reputation stating, “the reputation of the wider UK sector is rapidly eroding, with a similar trend seen in the US.”
Chinese universities, boosted by global research influence, continued their approach towards the top ten, while Australia’s top five institutions all decreased in rankings “due to declining reputation and international outlook.” Meanwhile, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all joined the top 200 for the first time, reflecting the growth of their higher education sectors.
In Canada, U of T was joined in the top 100 by the University of British Columbia and McGill University, while places 100 to 200 featured McMaster University and the Universities of Alberta, Montréal, Waterloo, and Ottawa.
According to THE, its World University Rankings “are the only global performance tables that judge research-intensive universities across all their core mission: teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.”
The rankings’ methodology is based on 157 million citations, 18 million research publications, and survey responses from over 93,000 scholars across the globe. Overall, the study featured the collection of over 470,000 data points from 2,860 institutions.
THE uses 18 performance indicators to create the rankings and provide comprehensive comparisons. The indicators are categorized into five groups that include teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook, and industry. Teaching accounts for 29.5 per cent of the rankings, with research environment at 29 per cent, research quality at 30 per cent, industry at four per cent and lastly, international outlook at 7.5 per cent.
While U of T dropped its rank since the 2023 list, it is the only Canadian university in the top 40, maintaining its reputation as a leading academic institution.
News Editor (Volume 51); Associate News Editor (Volume 50) — Samuel is a second-year student at UTM studying Politics and English. He previously worked with The Medium as an Associate News Editor and currently serves as the publication’s News Editor. Samuel is passionate about employing the power of writing to enhance our student community and hopes to help nurture a bright future for The Medium this year. In his spare time, Samuel can be found working out, creating music on the piano and drums, or exploring nature.