Philippine lags in natural sciences, QS world rankings show

MANILA, Philippines —  The Philippines continues to fall behind in the field of natural sciences, with no local university making it to the subject area’s latest global rankings in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject 2025.

Since QS opened the subject area global rankings in 2017, no Philippine university offering natural science programs has been recognized for its broader performance within the field.

However, the University of the Philippines (UP) received rankings in five out of the nine programs under Natural Sciences this year, such as Chemistry (601-700), Environmental Science (351-400), Geography (201-250), Mathematics (501-600) and Physics & Astronomy (601-675).

On the other hand, local universities made it to the rankings of the rest of the major subject areas such as Arts & Humanities, Engineering & Technology, Life Sciences & Medicine and Social Sciences & Management.

UP emerged the top university in the country across the four subject areas.

In Arts & Humanities, UP was ranked 331st best worldwide, followed by Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) at 345th and De La Salle University (DLSU) in the 410-450 bracket.

Last year, ADMU was named the top Philippine university in Arts and Humanities at 325th.

This year, UP was again the lone Philippine university that made it to the rankings in the Life Sciences & Medicine category at 372nd globally and the Engineering & Technology subject area within the 501-550 bracket.

UP’s ranking in the Life Sciences & Medicine area this year was an improvement from last year’s placing at the 501-550 bracket. Its bracket in Engineering & Technology was the same as last year.

In Social Sciences & Management, UP ranked 290th best globally, slipping a few notches from its ranking last year at 276th, followed by ADMU and DLSU, which both stayed at the 451-500 bracket.

QS said 21,000 programs taken by students at 1,700 universities across 100 countries were ranked this year. Over 5,200 schools worldwide offered up their programs for rankings.

QS ranked subjects based on five factors: academic reputation, employer feedback, research citations, researcher productivity and international research partnerships.