UC Berkeley remains the No. 1 public university in the world

On a scale of zero to 100, Berkeley’s global score this year is 88.7. (UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser)

For the ninth straight year, UC Berkeley tops the list of the world’s best public universities and remains the fourth-best university overall in U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 global universities rankings.

As they did last year, Harvard, MIT and Stanford University have claimed the top three spots among private and public universities globally. Rounding out the top 10 are the United Kingdom’s University of Oxford, the University of Washington, Columbia University, the U.K.’s University of Cambridge, the California Institute of Technology tied and Johns Hopkins University.

After UC Berkeley, the world’s top public universities include the University of Washington in sixth place overall, UCLA (14th) and UCSF (16th), among other schools.

The U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 best global universities rankings, issued Oct. 25, evaluated roughly 2,000 universities around the world from more than 90 countries on academic research performance and global and regional reputation.

On a scale of zero to 100, Berkeley’s global score this year is 88.7. The campus placed fifth for its global research standing and third for its regional research reputation.

Among other indicators, U.S. News & World Report’s global rankings evaluate universities on publications, books, conferences, cited papers and international collaboration.

Across 34 subject ratings, UC Berkeley ranked fourth in chemistry; third in space science; fourth in economics and business and physics, fifth in plant and animal science and computer science; sixth in environment/ecology and mathematics; ninth in biotechnology and tenth in arts and humanities.

Each October, U.S. News & World Report issues its global university rankings, not to be confused with the publication’s national university rankings announced each September.