The University of Pisa has been ranked among the world’s top 300 universities and placed fourth in Italy, behind Sapienza University of Rome—which retains the top national position—and the Universities of Milan and Padua. The result comes from the newly released 2025 edition of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), compiled by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, one of the most authoritative international agencies for evaluating universities and research institutions.
Compared with 2024, Pisa has maintained its leading national position in terms of alumni and researchers who have received Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals—ranking first and second respectively after Sapienza—and ranks third in Italy for per capita productivity, following San Raffaele University and the University of Trento.
The Shanghai Ranking evaluated more than 2,500 universities worldwide, of which only 1,000 feature in the final list. Italy is represented by 41 of them. Harvard University once again tops the global ranking, followed by Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The global top ten is almost entirely dominated by US universities, with the only exceptions being the UK’s University of Cambridge and University of Oxford, ranked fourth and sixth respectively.
“The ARWU ranking stands out for assessing scientific impact exclusively through objective and publicly available indicators, allowing anyone to verify the data behind the scores,” said Giuseppe Iannaccone, Deputy Rector of the University of Pisa. “That is why it is the ranking I personally value most. Its objectivity gives proper recognition to our national university system—and to our university in particular. In the global context, it is striking to see the growth of Eastern countries, both in quantitative and qualitative terms.”
The ARWU ranking is based on six indicators: Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals awarded to former students (Alumni) or current researchers (Award); the number of highly cited researchers affiliated with the institution (Hi-Ci); publications in Nature and Science (N&S); articles published in the most cited journals in the technical-scientific and social fields (PUB); and a sixth indicator that relates these metrics to academic staff size, providing a measure of per capita productivity (PCP).
