Harvard University tops the ranking list for the 20th year, beating Stanford University into second place, while Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) rises one position to third. Cambridge (4th), Berkeley (5th), Princeton (6th), Oxford (7th), Columbia (8th), Caltech (9th), and Chicago (10th) complete the top 10.

ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities:

• The number of alumni who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10%)
• The number of staff who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20%)
• The number of highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20%)
• The number of papers published in Nature and Science (20%)
• The number of papers indexed in the Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index (20%)
• The per capita academic performance of an institution (10%)

More than 2,500 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year, and the best 1,000 are published.

In July, the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy ranked the top universities based on their subject offerings.

For South Africa, the rankings have a familiar look, led by the University of Cape Town inside the top 300 institutions globally. The University of the Witwatersrand is second locally, ahead of Stellenbosch, the University of Johannesburg, and the University of Pretoria.

The biggest jump among local universities is seen by UJ, which climbed into the top 401-500 institutions globally in 2022, from the 601 – 700 list.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal also climbed from the 601 – 700 list to the 501-600 list.

BusinessTech