The world’s four biggest technology companies by market capitalisation – Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon – all have at least one founder that studied computer science at a U.S. university. Whether or not they finished their undergraduate studies – think Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates – or walked away from their Ph.D. – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – is another matter.

And four U.S. universities – MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley – dominate the top of the international league table for Computer Science in 2023. If you want to be a global leader in the IT industry, you need world-class institutions such as these to develop the talent and research that are essential to innovation.

Though the U.S. accounts for 70%, or 35 of the world’s top 50 technology companies by market cap this year, U.S. universities account for only 40%, or 20 of the world’s top 50 for computer science in the BlueSky Ranking of Computer Science Rankings 2023.

China, which is home to tech giants that include Tencent, Alibaba and JD can claim 7 schools in the top 50 of the BlueSky Thinking ranking. There are 10 others that make the top 100 in the individual rankings of US News and ARWU.

The UK is next with five universities, followed by Australia and Canada with four each. As so often, Singapore and Switzerland demonstrate that having populations of less than 6 and 9 million respectively has not prevented them from playing in the big league, each with two world-class institutions for computer science.

The BlueSky Ranking of Computer Science Rankings compiles the performance of schools across the four major global subject rankings published every year by Times Higher Education (THE), QS, US News and ARWU (Shanghai). Each of them uses a different methodology and measures different things with the inherent limitations of each assessment, so doing particularly well in one ranking and less well in another is reflected in the overall average score.

We’ll be generating more subject-specific rankings in the coming months. And you can also check out our global and regional rankings of university rankings.

Global Top 100: BlueSky Thinking Ranking of University Rankings 2022/23 – Global

N.America Top 50: BlueSky Thinking Ranking of University Rankings 2022/23 – N.America

Asia & Oceania Top 30: BlueSky Thinking Ranking of University Rankings 2022/23 – Asia & Oceania

BlueSky Ranking of Computer Science Rankings 2023

Global Rank 2022/23	Institution Name	Country	THE 2023	QS 2023	USNews 2022-23	ARWU 2022
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	USA	2	1	3	1
2	Stanford University	USA	3	3	2	2
3	Carnegie Mellon University	USA	5	2	4	4
4	University of California, Berkeley	USA	8	4	5	3
5	University of Oxford	UK	1	5	11	9
6	ETH Zurich	Switzerland	4	9	8	7
7	National University of Singapore	Singapore	7	6	6	13
8	Tsinghua University	China	13	15	1	5
9	Nanyang Technological University, Singapore	Singapore	14	11	6	8
10	Harvard University	USA	9	8	17	6
11	Peking University	China	20	19	9	19
12	Princeton University	USA	11	13	40	10
13	University of Toronto	Canada	22	12	27	15
14	Cornell University	USA	16	17	23	22
15	University of Washington	USA	15	14	14	37
16	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	China	27	27	13	16
17	Georgia Institute of Technology	USA	17	28	22	26
18	Imperial College London	UK	11	15	33	38
19	Columbia University	USA	21	22	45	11
20	University of California, Los Angeles	USA	26	18	46	14
21	Zhejiang University	China	40	36	12	18
22	University College London UCL	UK	29	24	25	36
23	University of Cambridge	UK	6	7	41	62
24	Technical University of Munich	Germany	10	29	17	62
25	Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong	36	53	10	20
26	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	USA	18	25	21	62
27	University of Edinburgh	UK	24	20	53	31
28	New York University	USA	25	26	55	28
29	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland	22	10	44	62
30	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	Hong Kong	29	40	31	47
31	University of Texas at Austin	USA	31	36	54	35
32	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	USA	37	44	32	49
33	University of Technology Sydney	Australia	69	73	15	17
34	University of California, San Diego	USA	33	44	36	62
35	The University of Sydney	Australia	62	57	29	29
36	University of Waterloo	Canada	43	22	51	62
37	University of Southern California	USA	53	55	49	25
38	University of British Columbia	Canada	47	21	56	62
39	University of Montreal	Canada	34	47	74	33
40	University of Maryland	USA	45	59	24	62
41	King Abdulaziz University	Saudi Arabia	56	50	35	62
42	University of Science and Technology of China	China	64	88	28	32
43	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)	South Korea	44	29	60	87
43	Johns Hopkins University	USA	28	72	58	62
45	Université Paris-Saclay	France	66	41	72	62
46	University of Pennsylvania	USA	35	43	79	87
47	University of Melbourne	Australia	51	41	66	87
48	Nanjing University	China	58	110	39	62
49	Huazhong University of Science and Technology	China	137	95	19	21
50	Australian National University	Australia	66	56	64	87

University Subject Rankings Methodologies

Each of the major university rankings uses a different methodology and weights the use of different data to produce their league tables, so it is important to understand what is being measured. In simple terms:

THE – the performance indicators are grouped into five areas: Teaching (the learning environment); Research (volume, income and reputation); Citations (research influence); International Outlook (staff, students and research); and Industry Income (knowledge transfer).

Teaching (30%); Research (30%); Citations (30%); International Outlook (7.5%); Industry Income (2.5%).

QS– six indicators looking at four broad categories: research reputation, the learning and teaching environment, research impact, and internationalisation. 

Academic Reputation (40%); Employer Reputation (10%); Citations per Faculty (20%); Faculty Student Ratio (20%); International Student Ration (5%); International Faculty Ratio (5%)

ARWU – considers every university that has any Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, Highly Cited Researchers, or papers published in Nature or Science. In addition, universities with a significant amount of papers indexed by Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) are also included.

Quality of Education (10%); Quality of Faculty (40%); Research Output (40%) Per Capita Performance (10%)

US News – calculates the rankings using 13 indicators and weights that U.S. News chose to measure global research performance.

Global Research Reputation (12.5%); Regional Research Reputation (12.5%); Publications (10%); Books (2.5%); Conferences (2.5%), Normalized Citation Impact (10%); Total Citations (7.5%); Number Of Publications Among 10% Most Cited (12.5%); Percentage Of Total Publications Among 10% Most Cited (10%); International Collaboration – Relative To Country (5%); International Collaboration (5%); Number Of Highly Cited Papers Among Top 1% Most Cited In Respective Field (5%); Percentage Of Total Publications Among Top 1% Most Highly Cited Papers (5%) 

About the author

Matt Symonds is Chief Editor of BlueSky Thinking. He is the S of QS, co-founding QS Quacquarelli Symonds, publishers of the QS World University Rankings and numerous business school rankings.

In 2010 Matt was the media consultant for Times Higher Education to support the launch of their own THE World University Rankings, and has subsequently worked for THE and WSJ for business school rankings.

Matt writes about Higher Education and management for Forbes, BBC, Times of India and formerly The Economist and Bloomberg.