Ranking: Top 20 universities in Asia 2025

Notable changes include the rise in ranks for Universiti Putra Malaysia, from 25th spot last year to 20th position this year.

The QS Asia University Rankings 2025 have been announced, revealing notable changes in how universities in the region are faring.

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), for instance, has risen from the 25^th spot last year to 20^th position this year. Meanwhile, universities from Japan, namely The University of Tokyo (previously 14^th place), Kyoto University (previously 18^th place) and Tohoku University (previously 20^th place) have fallen off from the top 20 list and now stand at 21^st, 23^rd and 25^th positions respectively.

In partnership with tens of thousands of higher education institutions across the world, this edition of the university rankings involved the collection of datapoints from 16.4mn academic papers as well as over 250,000 views of both academic and employers.

In an overview, the top 20 Asian universities of 2025 are as follows:

1. Peking University
2. The University of Hong Kong
3. National University of Singapore (NUS)
4. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore)
5. Fudan University, China
6. The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
7. Tsinghua University
8. Zhejiang University
9. Yonsei University
10. City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK)
11. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
12. Universiti Malaya (UM)
13. Korea University
14. Shanghai Jiao Tong University
15. KASIT – Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology
16. Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)
17. Hong Kong Polytechnic University
18. Seoul National University
19. Hangyang University
20. Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)

A closer look into the Southeast Asia region, the top 10 schools are as follows:

1. National University of Singapore (NUS)
2. Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU Singapore)
3. Universiti Malaya (UM)
4. Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
5. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
6. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
7. Taylor's University
8. Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
9. UCSI University
10. Universitas Indonesia

The ranks above follow a set of criteria that cover the following indicators and its percentage:

• Academic reputation - 30%
• Employer reputation - 20%
• Faculty-student ratio - 10%
• Citations per paper - 10%
• International research network - 10%
• Papers per faculty - 5%
• Staff with PhD - 5%
• International student ratio - 2.5%
• International faculty ratio - 2.5%
• Inbound exchange student ratio - 2.5%
• Outbound exchange student ratio - 2.5%

For the full Asia ranking, view here.

For the full ranking criteria for the Asia region, view here.

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