US collapse, 8 of the world’s top 10 universities are in China

China's Zhejiang University campus.

China has left the US far behind in terms of providing quality higher education. According to the 2025 CWTS Leiden Rankings 2025, 8 of the world's top 10 universities in the science category are in China. The remaining two universities in the 'top ten' are from the US and Canada.

China's Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University occupy the first and second places on the list. Harvard University in the US has taken third place. The CWTS Leiden Ranking is an online platform that presents important information about the scientific performance of more than 1,500 leading universities in the world. The ranking was published by the Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

This ranking was published for the first time, taking into account data from the period 2006-2009. Initially, the rankings were dominated by US universities. Harvard University was at the top. The University of Toronto was in second place and the University of Michigan was in third place. At that time, the top 10 was dominated by US universities.

However, six renowned US universities that were in the top 10 during the period 2006–2009 are not even in the top 15 today. These universities include the University of Michigan, the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), Johns Hopkins University, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University.

In the period 2019–2022, Harvard University was dethroned for the first time by Zhejiang University in China. And now, in the ranking for the period 2020–2023, Chinese universities have relegated Harvard to third place.

Other universities in the top 10 this year are Sichuan University, St. S. University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Tsinghua University and the University of Toronto (Canada).
The traditional version of the CWTS Leiden Ranking is based on data from the Web of Science database. This version provides detailed information on the scientific performance of universities around the world.

Source: NDTV