Asian University Eclipses Mainland Europe’s Best for 1st Time

An Asian university placed higher than continental Europe’s leading institution for the first time in the latest annual global ranking released recently by British magazine Times Higher Education, reflecting what it called a shift of academic power from West to East, Kyodo News reported.

Tsinghua University in Beijing rose to 11th place in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027, overtaking Switzerland’s ETH Zurich. [Photo: Tsinghua University]

In the World University Rankings 2027, China’s Tsinghua University overtook the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, known as ETH Zurich, to rank 11th.

ETH Zurich ranked 12th, making Tsinghua the highest-ranked university in Asia and the first Asian university to surpass continental Europe’s leading institution.

The other Asian universities to make the top 15 were Peking University, ranked 13th, and the National University of Singapore, ranked 15th. This brought the total number of Asian universities in the top 15 to three for the first time.

The magazine evaluates university performance across areas including teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The top 10 continued to be dominated by British and U.S. institutions.

The University of Oxford ranked first for the 11th consecutive year, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in second and Princeton University in third.

Among Japanese institutions, the University of Tokyo fell from 26th place last year to 27th, while Kyoto University dropped from 61st to 62nd. With 2,297 global institutions ranked, Japan had the fourth-largest number at 112, although the figure was down from 115 the previous year.

Phil Baty, Times Higher Education’s global affairs officer, described the results as evidence of a “historic realignment” of academic power from West to East.