UOC in seventh group of Spain's best universities according to Times Higher Education ranking

This is the seventh time the UOC has appeared in this prestigious list of the world's best universities produced each year by Times Higher Education (THE). The 2025 THE ranking places the UOC in the 601-800 bracket of the more than 2,000 institutions rated worldwide, as was the case in 2024, too. This means that the UOC is among the 10 best universities in Spain, specifically in the seventh group. The THE World University Rankings is considered one of the most respected and transparent in the field of higher education, rivalled only by the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities and the QS World University Rankings.

The UOC is ranked below only seven Spanish universities out of the 59 included on the global list: the University of Barcelona (in 149th place), Pompeu Fabra University (in 176th place), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (in 199th place), the University of Navarre (251-300), the Autonomous University of Madrid (351-400) and the Complutense University of Madrid and the Universitat de València (501-600).

The UOC is in the same bracket as six other Spanish universities, which are in the seventh ranked group on the list (601-800): the Universitat Politècnica de València, the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the University of Granada, the University of Santiago de Compostela and the University of the Basque Country.

The UOC is Spain's highest ranked online university in this year's edition. On a worldwide scale, it even ranks higher than the UK's Open University, which is in the 801-1,000 bracket.

THE ranking focuses on five areas at each institution

The ranking looks at five areas in order to gauge the universities' level of higher education excellence: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry and international outlook.

The UOC obtained the following results: 18.2 for teaching, 19.6 for research environment, 75.1 for research quality, 26.2 for industry and 51 for international outlook.

Over the last few years, the UOC has risen by more than 10 points in the international outlook category, as shown in the chart below:

Since 2019, the UOC's score for the research environment category has gone up by seven points, as you can see here:

The University of Oxford tops the rankings once again this year, followed by MIT.