The World's Best Just Got Bigger and Better

U.S. News has just published a midyear update of the World's Best Universities rankings. We've significantly expanded the number of schools and countries on these lists. These rankings are based on data from the 2009 QS World University Rankings, which were produced in association with QS Quacquarelli Symonds. One of the world's leading networks for careers and education, QS Quacquarelli Symonds has been publishing world rankings since 2004. None of the first set of World's Best Universities rankings published on Oct. 20, 2009, change as a result of this expansion; rather, some of the ranking lists have been significantly lengthened.

[See the World's Best Universities rankings.]

We now have the Top 400 Universities worldwide (increased from the Top 200), the Top 50 Asian Universities (increased from the Top 30), the Top 50 European Universities (increased from the Top 30), the Top 20 Canadian Universities (unchanged), and the Top 20 Australian and New Zealand Universities (unchanged). The listing also includes the Top 100 global rankings in the fields of arts and humanities; engineering and IT; life sciences and biomedicine; natural sciences; and social sciences (each global subject area ranking was expanded from the Top 50). 

Why is U.S. News doing these global rankings? The U.S. News World's Best Universities rankings enable our readers to understand more fully how well American institutions perform when compared with other institutions of higher learning around the world. The following seven countries accounted for 62 percent of the top 400:

1. United States: 87 universities (22 percent of the worldwide total)
2. United Kingdom: 47 universities (12 percent)
3. Germany: 32 universities (8 percent)
4. Australia: 22 universities (6 percent)
5. Japan: 19 universities (5 percent)
6. Canada: 19 universities (5 percent)
7. France: 17 universities (4 percent). 

How do the World's Best Universities rankings differ from U.S. News's America's Best Colleges and America's Best Graduate Schools rankings? These two articles answer that question:

About the World's Best Universities Rankings

World's Best Universities: The Methodology.

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