No Nigerian university featured in the top 1000 of the 2025 QS World University Rankings.
The QS World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).
It is one of the most widely referenced and influential university ranking systems in the world.
The rankings assess universities based on various criteria, including academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio, and international student ratio.
These indicators aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the institutions’ performance in areas like research, teaching, employability, and internationalization.
QS recently released the 2025 edition of its rankings, featuring over 1,500 universities across 105 higher education systems.
The US is the most represented country or territory, with 197 ranked institutions.
This is followed by the United Kingdom with 90 and mainland China with 71.
For the 13th consecutive year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) maintains its reign at the top.
Imperial College London jumped four places from its 2024 position to take second.
The University of Oxford and Harvard University are in third and fourth place respectively.
The University of Cambridge rounds out the top five.
Below are the world’s top 20 universities:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Imperial College London
- University of Oxford
- Harvard University
- University of Cambridge
- Stanford University
- ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
- National University of Singapore (NUS)
- UCL
- California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of California, Berkeley (UCB)
- The University of Melbourne
- Peking University
- Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU)
- Cornell University
- The University of Hong Kong
- The University of Sydney
- The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney)
- Tsinghua University
However, no Nigerian university made the top 1000.
The University of Lagos (UNILAG) and the University of Ibadan (UI) are the only Nigerian universities on the list.
They both ranked in the 1001+ class, having moved up from the 1401+ class they ranked in for 2024.
