The University of Oxford topped its European and global counterparts in recently released university rankings. Oxford came top of the 2026 Quacquerelli Symonds (QS) European University rankings, released on 28th January. The University was also ranked best in the world for computer and medical sciences in the 2026 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings by Subject, published on 21st January.
The QS rankings scored Oxford a perfect score of 100 in academic and employment reputation, which are weighted heavily by the survey’s scoring system. Oxford also excelled in the firm’s assessment of the university’s “international research network”, its “faculty-student ratio”, and its “employment outcomes”.
The QS Europe results had Oxford outstrip British rival Imperial College London, which placed two places ahead of it in the QS World rankings released in June last year. Imperial placed third in the new European rankings, behind Oxford and ETH Zurich, a primarily STEM-focused university in Switzerland.
The THE World University Rankings for “medical and health” put Oxford narrowly ahead of University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which topped the THE rankings for arts and humanities, business and economics, and social sciences. Oxford was also awarded top score by THE for computer science, with the same immediate runners-up. This is the 15th year running that Oxford has been ranked top for medicine, and the 8th that it has topped the computer science tables.
QS is a for-profit higher education analysis firm which provides a variety of organisational services to higher education institutions. It was founded in 1990 to assist students looking to study abroad, and is involved in the promotion and administration of the Erasmus programme.
In response to the rankings, Oxford Vice-Chancellor Irene Tracey said: “At a moment when the UK is rightly seeking closer partnership with Europe, including renewed participation in programmes such as Erasmus, this recognition is particularly meaningful. It affirms Oxford’s long-standing role as a European university with a global outlook, committed to openness, collaboration and public service.”
The prioritisation of STEM in QS rankings has been a source for criticism. Several of the rankings’ measurements of institutional influence are based on citation databases which weigh STEM subjects above arts and humanities.
In 2011, an opinion article in the New Statesman called the QS rankings “a load of old baloney”. Writer David Blanchflower criticised the fact that 50% of the survey’s points come from an institution’s reputation among other academics and employers, whose position to make a judgement is questionable.
Other criticisms of the QS rankings have alleged that the firm’s results are Eurocentric, and that the sample size of their reputation survey, at between 2% and 8% of the available respondents, is too small to be reliable.
Between 2004 and 2005, QS and THE jointly published the THE-QS World University Rankings. THE cited a perceived favouritism in the QS rankings for sciences over humanities, as well as other methodological issues, as reasons for the split.
QS and THE were approached for comment.
