Nigeria and many countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa were missing in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World Reputation Rankings 2025.
In the African continent comprising 54 recognised member countries, Nigeria has 278 universities, Tunisia has 236 universities, the second-highest number, while Morocco has 154.
The University of Cape Town, South Africa is the only African university featured in the 300 prestigious Universities rankings.
The World Reputation Rankings 2025 is a presentation of top universities by prestige. It revealed the top universities for academic reputation and prestige globally.
The 2025 edition ranked 300 institutions from 38 countries and territories using a revamped methodology.
Harvard remains number one for the 14th consecutive year and is joint top for a new voter diversity measure (with Oxford and Cambridge), reaffirming its status as the most prestigious college in the US.
Oxford is now joint second; the highest position for a UK institution since 2015.
Tsinghua maintains eighth position globally for academic reputation
LMU Munich, KU Leuven, Sorbonne University, the University of Melbourne, University of Hong Kong and University of Manchester all join the top 50 most powerful university brands.
Ten new countries featured since last year. Four new countries make their World Reputation Rankings debut: Chile, Malaysia, Poland and Portugal.
Revamped methodology provides deeper insights than ever before into university prestige worldwide
According to THE, the The World Reputation Rankings, now in its 14th year, is based on six performance indicators for the first time, to provide a more robust assessment of reputation and reflect the fact that the subject of reputation is gaining a wider audience among the academic community.
The performance breakdown is as follows: Harvard University (US); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US); University of Oxford (UK); Stanford University (US); University of Cambridge (UK); and the University of California (US).
In the 7th position is Princeton University (US) followed by Tsinghua University (China); Yale University (US) and the University of Tokyo (Japan) in the 10th position.
