In this ranking period, VNU continued to improve its rank in Research quality with 51.8 points - an increase of 5 points compared to the THE WUR 2024. It also maintained a top performance in international publication collaboration with a score of 78.9 out of 100. The ranking by criterion results of the THE WUR 2025 were obtained from the analysis of over 157 million citations from 18 million scientific publications stored in the Scopus database, and the survey data from more than 93,000 scholars worldwide.
The THE WUR rankings 2025 used a new set of criteria (THE WUR 3.0), including 18 assessment indicators across 5 categories: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.
Compared to the previous ranking method, THE WUR 3.0 has increased the number of assessment criteria from 13 to 18.
The THE WUR rankings 2025 attracted four more participating higher education institutions from Vietnam, raising the number of participating Vietnamese institutions in the rankings to 10 universities, namely VNU-Hanoi, VNU-Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Duy Tan University, Ton Duc Thang University, Hue University, the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi University of Pharmacy, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, and Van Lang University.
The University of Oxford in the UK retained its top spot for the ninth consecutive year, breaking Harvard University’s previous record of eight years at number one.
Oxford’s scores continue to improve significantly, particularly in areas related to income, research quality and teaching quality. Its proportion of international students also stands out.
In the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the highest-ranked university, placing second with a total score of 98.1, just 0.4 point behind Oxford.
Stanford University unexpectedly dropped from second to sixth place, its lowest ranking since 2010, due to declines in teaching quality, research environment, and international outlook scores.
Harvard University moved up from fourth to third place, while Princeton University rose from sixth to fourth.
In the top 20, Asia has three representatives: Tsinghua University (12th), Peking University (13th) and the National University of Singapore (17th).
Tsinghua University maintained its position, while Peking University and the National University of Singapore each rose by one and two spots, respectively.
