QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
QS World University Rankings 2020: MIT Top, US Universities Hit Historic Low

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the world's best university for the eighth consecutive year. The sixteenth edition of the QS World University Rankings, released on June 18 by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, sees the United States record its worst performance on record. Only 16% of its universities improve their rank.

QS ranked 1000 universities from 82 different locations, surveyed 94,000 academics and 44,000 hiring managers and analyzed 11.8 million research papers and 100 million citations. Universities are measured on academic standing, graduate employability, student/staff ratio, research impact, and internationalization.

Over 70 million stakeholders will view the rankings on www.TopUniversities.com this year.

Key Facts

• The University of Cambridge hits its lowest-ever position (7^th). The UK records its third-worst performance ever, but the University of Oxford rises to 4^th;
• International student ratios at UK and US universities have consistently fallen;
• ETH Zurich (6^th), the Continental European top university, achieves its highest position ever, overtaking the University of Cambridge;
• Asia's top two universities are the National University of Singapore and its compatriot Nanyang Technological University (both joint-11^th);
• 24 of Australia's 35 universities rise;
• China now has 19 of the world's top 200 research universities; it had 12 in 2016;
• Of the 302 universities from the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, 216 have recorded worse Faculty/Student Ratio performance, QS's measure of institutional teaching capacity;
• Latin America's top university is the Universidad de Buenos Aires (74^th) for the fifth consecutive year. Brazilian and Argentinian universities are losing employer confidence in their graduates;
• The Middle East has two top-200 universities for the first time ever. Saudi Arabia's King Abdul Aziz University (186^th) is the new regional leader.