The's Ranking 2025, Bologna first Italian university: 146th in the world

European universities are losing ground, dogged by the growth of Asian universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025. Although Oxford University is confirmed as the most prestigious university in the world, first for the ninth consecutive year so as to set an all-time record, Europe's representation at the top of the rankings is shrinking: it now counts 91 of the world's top 200 universities, down from 99 in 2019. The Italian situation is stable, with three universities in the top 200.

Among the Italians, those ranked by the The's Ranking 2025 are 55. Of these only three make it into the top 200 and none into the world's top 100. First is the University of Bologna, for the first time in the world's top 150, in 146th place, up nine places from last year.
Behind it again this time we find the Normale Scuola Superiore di Pisa, which ranks 154th (it was 168th in 2024, ndr) and the Sapienza of Rome, which, however, loses four positions and drops from 181st place to 184th.

For four other universities at home, however, the ranking was in the 201-250 range. We are talking about the Politecnico of Milan, the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa, the University ofPadua and Vita-Salute San Raffaele. With a fifth (Umanitas University), on the other hand, in the 251-300 group.

At the top of the world's universities are only universities from the United States and Great Britain, which share the top ten positions. With three British presences (Oxford first, Cambridge fifth and Imperial college London ninth) and seven American ones: Boston's Mit in second, Harvard in third, Princeton in fourth, Stanford in sixth, the California Institute of Technology in seventh, Berkeley in eighth and Yale in tenth).

Looking at the top 20, China and Singapore come out on top. We have to go down to 26th position to find the first European, the German Technical University of Munich.
A crisis in European education sees ten universities in France in their worst position ever, two-thirds of Dutch universities are down, the Netherlands drops out of the top 50.
Europe was, until 2023, the most represented continent in The World University ranking, now for the second year in a row, the most represented continent is Asia. Mainland China is inching closer and closer to a position in the world's top 10, while the top universities of Japan and South Korea are also climbing.
In the past five years, Asia has contributed the most newcomers to the ranking: in the 211 universities that entered the ranking for the first time since the 2021 edition, 60 per cent came from Asia while 17 per cent from Europe.