QS University Rankings: Italia moves up the table – PoliMi ranks 87th in the world

The QS World University Rankings 2027 offer a glimmer of hope for the Italian higher education system. With 26 out of 47 universities improving their position compared to the previous year, and the Politecnico di Milano climbing 11 places in a single edition to reach 87th place worldwide. This is an almost unexpected development, given that less than three weeks ago another international ranking, the Global 2000 by CWUR, had instead reported a 79 per cent decline in the performance of our universities.

Setting aside the fact that international rankings are not comparable, as they use different indicators and data, and taking into account the triumphalist tone with which individual universities welcomed the results of the QS World University Rankings 2027 yesterday, the most interesting aspect revealed by the rankings concerns the overall trend for Italy. Particularly when compared with the rest of the EU. Suffice it to say that over the same period, Germany saw 38 out of 60 institutions fall in the rankings, Spain 24 out of 48, France 19 out of 38 and the Netherlands 11 out of 13. Among European university systems with more than ten ranked universities, only Ireland (+63 per cent) and Austria (+75 per cent) recorded a net increase in the number of universities improving relative to those declining that was higher than Italia’s (+34 per cent).

Another source of satisfaction for us is that our ten highest-ranked universities have all moved up the table. More specifically, the 11 places gained by PoliMi (see separate article on this page) form part of a broader trend involving some of Italy’s leading universities. For example, Sapienza University of Rome has reached 111th place globally – the best result in its history – having climbed 112 places since 2017 (+50.2 per cent). Or Bologna, which has climbed to 123rd place, up 85 places over the last decade (+40.9%), whilst Padua has recorded one of the most significant improvements in the system, rising from 336th to 204th place worldwide (+132 places, +39.3%). The Polytechnic University of Turin has also achieved its best-ever ranking, climbing 99 places in one go (from 305th to 206th place, +32.5%).

The list would be even longer if we were to include the improvements in the individual indicators used in the latest QS ranking. Take, for example, Vita Salute San Raffaele University’s sixth place worldwide in the ‘Citations per faculty’ category, which measures the impact of research, or the 37 places gained by the Catholic University in the ‘Employer reputation’ category, which gauges feedback from employers. This is against a national backdrop in which both corporate and academic reputations are showing a general improvement. However, internationalisation remains the weak link in the chain.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the overall balance of power, which sees the US-UK duopoly continue to dominate the top of the rankings, with four institutions each in the top ten: for the US, MIT is first, Stanford second (tied with Imperial College London), Harvard in fifth and the California Institute of Technology in seventh; for the British, alongside Imperial College, Oxford ranks fourth, Cambridge sixth and UCL eighth, as does the Swiss ETH Zurich, which – together with the National University of Singapore – is the only non-English-speaking institution to make it into the world’s top ten.