There are thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of institutions of higher learning around the world that admit new students every year. Prospective students are therefore usually tasked with researching the best institutions that suit their learning preferences before making their application. The easiest way is usually to see how a university of interest ranks globally (or in its native country) and then comparing it with another university. A more detailed approach would be to compare universities not on their rankings alone but also on metrics such as research environment, teaching standards, hospitability to foreign students, and industry income among others. To that end, this dataset provides a list of universities together with their rankings and various other metrics of interest according to the Times Higher Education.

In February 2026, Google.com was the most visited website worldwide, with 88.46 billion visits. The platform has maintained its leading position since June 2010, when it surpassed Yahoo to take first place. YouTube ranked second during the same period, recording 45.07 billion monthly visits. The internet leaders: search, social, and e-commerce Social networks, search engines, and e-commerce websites shape the online experience as we know it. While Google leads the global online search market by far, YouTube and Facebook have become the world’s most popular websites for user-generated content, solidifying Alphabet’s and Meta’s leadership over the online landscape. Meanwhile, websites such as Amazon and eBay generate millions in profits from the sale and distribution of goods, making the e-market sector an integral part of the global retail scene. What is next for online content? Powering social media and websites like Reddit and Wikipedia, user-generated content keeps moving the internet’s engines. However, the rise of generative artificial intelligence will bring significant changes to how online content is produced and handled. ChatGPT is already transforming how online search is performed, and news of Google's 2024 deal for licensing Reddit content to train large language models (LLMs) signals that the internet is likely to go through a new revolution. While AI's impact on the online market might bring both opportunities and challenges, effective content management will remain crucial for profitability on the web.

This file presents a cleaned, transformed, and preprocessed version of the university ranking data. All necessary data cleaning steps have been applied to ensure the data is consistent, accurate, and immediately usable for analysis and machine learning tasks.

The cleaning process involved:** - Robust handling of missing values (e.g., imputation or removal based on data characteristics). - Corrections of data types for all numerical columns (Overall Teaching Score, Research Score, Research Quality, Industry Income Score, International Outlook Score, Overall Score, Rank). - Standardization of text fields (University, Location) for uniformity. - Identification and removal/handling of duplicate entries.

Purpose: This dataset is perfect for:

• Direct exploratory data analysis (EDA) and data visualization.
• Building predictive models (e.g., predicting university rank or performance factors).
• Conducting comparative studies and trend analysis of global higher education. Ready for: Machine Learning, Statistical Analysis, Data Visualization, Educational Research.

Data Source: This dataset on global university rankings was compiled from publicly available data on a renowned Times Higher Education World University Rankings website (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings)

Data Collection Method: The raw data for this dataset was systematically scraped from the aforementioned public source using automated scripts. This process involved: 1. Identifying relevant pages: Locating the pages containing the university ranking.

1. HTML Parsing: Extracting the structured data (university names, scores, ranks, location, etc.) from the HTML content of these pages.
2. Initial Storage:Saving the extracted raw data into a preliminary format before any cleaning.

Disclaimer: This dataset is provided for educational and analytical purposes. While efforts were made to accurately capture the publicly available data, users are encouraged to refer to the original ranking sources for official and the most up-to-date information, as data on external websites may change.

Google.com continues to dominate the digital landscape, ranking as the most linked-to website worldwide with 468,745 referring subnets as of December 2024. Facebook.com follows closely in second place with 470,479 referring subnets, while YouTube.com ranked third with 417,827.

This dataset contains structured outputs extracted from the THE World University Rankings API using a lightweight Python tool.

The official THE interface limits data visibility, but the backend exposes the information through an accessible API.

This project retrieves that data and provides it in a clean, reusable JSON format suitable for: - academic analytics - higher education research - university benchmarking - dashboard/reporting systems - strategy and ranking performance tracking

The dataset is intended for analysts, researchers, and developers working with institutional data and ranking metrics.

🧰 Included Files You can upload one or multiple items depending on your workflow: - /json/ — Raw JSON files retrieved from the API - sample_output.json — Sample ranking dataset - api_endpoints.txt — List of API endpoints used - script.py — Python script to fetch data (optional, if you want to publish)

🔧 How the Data Was Collected The Python tool connects to the backend API powering the THE ranking website and retrieves: - ranking metadata - institution details - scores and category breakdowns - year-specific ranking positions - geographical & sector-specific information - The API does not require authentication for these endpoints.

🧪 Example Usage (Python) import json

with open("sample_output.json", "r") as f: data = json.load(f)

Example: print the top 10 institutions

for item in data[:10]: print(item["rank"], item["name"], item.get("location")) 📊 Possible Applications Trend analysis of university rankings Comparing institutions across regions Visualizing score changes over time Creating dashboards with Power BI, Tableau, or Python Feeding institutional research systems 🚀 Author Cenk Kabahasanoğlu

Dev.to Article: https://dev.to/c3nk/a-python-tool-that-simplifies-access-to-the-world-university-rankings-data-24im

GitHub Repository: https://github.com/c3nk/THE-World-University-Rankings

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 include 1,907 universities across 108 countries and regions. The table is based on a new methodology, which includes 18 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.

Explore the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 below. Trusted worldwide by students, teachers, governments and industry experts, the list ranks 2,092 institutions from 115 countries and territories.

In August 2025, Google.com was the most visited website worldwide, attracting approximately 5.66 billion unique monthly visitors. YouTube.com ranked second, with an estimated 2.98 billion unique visitors. Both platforms also held the top positions globally in terms of total website visits.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 includes almost 1,400 universities across 92 countries, standing as the largest and most diverse university rankings ever to date. The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

The leading African university is located in South Africa. The University of Cape Town heads the ranking of the *** leading universities in Africa and ***** worldwide. Out of ten institutions, ***** are situated in South Africa, while *** are Egyptian universities, Cairo University and Alexandria University. This ranking is mainly based on webometrics, which is the web visibility of the academic institutions.

Harvard University was the top-ranked university in the world in 2025, with a score of 100 according to the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy group. Out of the top 30 ranked universities, the United States had 19 different universities on the list. An American legacy Harvard University is by far the most prestigious university in the United States. Founded in 1636, it is the country’s oldest institution of higher learning. Harvard is a member of the Ivy League, which is a group of eight private colleges in the Northeastern United States. Ivy League colleges are known in the U.S. for being highly selective while providing top education. The top of the top Out of thousands of higher education institutions in the United States, Harvard is even more exceptional for producing both the most presidents and the most billionaires. Attending college is typically seen as giving attendees a leg up in society, although the high cost of attendance can sometimes negate this effect.

Response variable: overall_score

Scenario It is a difficult task to find an overall measure of quality for higher-education institutions, as there are many areas of work most universities worldwide involve themselves in, such as teaching, research, and knowledge exchange. Nevertheless, to decide on a way to predict the overall quality of an institution would be desirable for those who want to make an informed decision of whether to engage with a specific university, as a student, research collaborator or as industry partner.

This dataset contains records of many universities, offering data on performance metrics, student data and descriptive data. The goal is to forecast the value for the variable overall_score, by employing models suitable for regression problems. Find out what characteristics have the most influence on the general quality of institutions of higher learning.

Columns Description name: Name of the university

scores_teaching: The teaching quality of the university, scored out of 100

scores_research: The research quality of the university, scored out of 100

scores_citations: Citation volume and of academics based at the university, scored out of 100

scores_international_outlok: The university’s level of engagement with international partners, scored out of 100 record_type: Category of the record

member_level: Level of membership

location: Country where the university is located

stats_number_students: The number of students enrolled at the university

stats_student_staff_ratio: Number of staff members per student stats_pc_intl_students: The percentage of enrolled students that are classed as international

stats_female_male_ratio: The ration of female students versus male students

subjects_offered: The range of subject areas that are taught at the university

closed: Whether the university is currently closed to new applicants

unaccredited: Whether the university is currently unaccredited

overall_score: The overall quality of the university, scored out of 100

For the academic year of 2025/2026, the University of Oxford was ranked as the best university in the world, with an overall score of 98.2 according to the Times Higher Education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University followed behind. A high number of the leading universities in the world are located in the United States, with the ETH Zürich in Switzerland, the highest ranked neither in the United Kingdom nor the U.S.

In 2025, Harvard University was placed first with the highest reputation score worldwide, at 99.9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was second on the Times Higher Education world university ranking, with a reputation score of 99.7.

Dataset containing university rankings. See source: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings

Originally used in:

Anahideh, Hadis, and Nasrin Mohabbati-Kalejahi. "Local explanations of global rankings: insights for competitive rankings." IEEE Access 10 (2022): 30676-30693. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9733934

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The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 list the top 1,000 universities in the world, making it our biggest international league table to date. It is the only global university performance table to judge research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. We use 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019 includes more than 1,250 universities, making it our biggest international league table to date. It is the only global university performance table to judge research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. We use 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 include more than 1,500 universities across 93 countries and regions, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date. The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.