Philippine universities keep low spots in 2025 THE World University Rankings
MANILA, Philippines — After last year's steep decline, most Philippine universities remain in their lowest-ever spots in the 2025 Times Higher Education world university rankings, according to the results released on Wednesday, October 9.
The country's top two schools—the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines (UP)—have stayed in the 1001-1200 and 1201-1500 brackets, respectively, matching last year's ranking.
Meanwhile, newcomer Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology broke into the rankings for the first time, joining the De La Salle University (DLSU), Mapua University and the University of Sto. Tomas (UST) in the 1501+ bracket. DLSU, Mapua and UST landed in same 1501+ bracket in last year's rankings.
This brings the number of ranked Philippine universities from five last year to six.
Change of methodology. After the THE rolled out a new methodology in 2023, the Ateneo slid from its debut 351-400 bracket to the 1001-1200 bracket. Meanwhile, UP also dropped last year from the 801-1000 bracket to 1201-1500.
THE's university rankings are based on five categories: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry and international outlook.
Last year, the number of performance indicators THE uses to evaluate universities expanded from 13 to 18, with schools now evaluated according to their research quality and the number of granted patents.THE updated its methodology to "reflect the outputs of the diverse range of research-intensive universities across the world," according to its website.
Most recent rankings. For the 2025 index, the Ateneo saw its overall score slightly go down from 28.3-32.6 to 30.7-34.3 due to a slight dip in research quality and industry compared to the previous ranking.
UP's overall score also dropped from last year's 22.8-28.2 to 25.2-30.6, driven by slight decreases in research environment and research quality.
Despite this, Ateneo remains well ahead of all Philippine universities in teaching and research quality, while UP has the highest scores in research environment and industry.
UST, which has an overall score of 10.5-25.1, leads all Philippine schools in international outlook—the category it received the highest score in—which tries to measure the proportion of international students and staff as well as linkages.
Ateneo's take. Ateneo University President Roberto Yap SJ sees the world rankings as "global recognition" that Ateneo is a "top-performing university in the Philippines."
"However, rankings like these do not fully define what Ateneo stands for; they are merely tools for benchmarking and continual improvement as an institution," Yap said in a university press released.
Other universities
At least 15 other Philippine colleges and universities received a reporter status in this year's THE rankings. They are the following: the Cebu Technological University, the Central Luzon State University, De La Salle College of Saint Benilde, Lyceum-Northwestern University, Manila Central University, National University Philippines, Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology, Philippine State College of Aeronautics, Quezon City University, Saint Louis University, Tarlac Agricultural University, University of Eastern Philippines, University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines, University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines, University of Immaculate Conception and the Visayas State University.
A “reporter” status is given to a school when it submits data to THE but falls short of meeting the criteria needed to be ranked against other schools.
For this year's world rankings, the University of Oxford in England retained the top spot for a ninth year in the row, setting a new record for the longest stay at the top of the league table. This surpasses Harvard's previous eight-year reign that ended in 2011.
Other schools on the top five are the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (2nd), Harvard University (3rd) and Princeton University (4th), all based in the United States. Fifth place is the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Top schools in Asia are Tsinghua University and Peking University in China, which landed in the 12th and 13th spots, respectively.
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