Which are the best universities in Mexico?
Out of a total of 1,300 universities that appear in the QS World University Rankings 2022, 24 are Mexican and two are among the top 5 in Latin America.
As it does every year, the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) portal published its ranking of the best universities in the world (World University Rankings 2022), where the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) is the best positioned in the country, ranking 105th out of a total of 1,300 houses of study, both public and private.
For the ranking, QS used a methodology in which six metrics were evaluated with different weighting: Academic reputation (40%), Ratio of professors/students (20%), Citations per faculty (20%), Employer reputation (10%), Ratio of international professors and Ratio of international students (5% each).
In the case of Mexico, 24 institutions competed in the ranking, with UNAM being the best evaluated with an overall score of 58.3. It is even the second best in Latin America, only behind Argentina's University of Buenos Aires (UBA), which is ranked 69th, with a score of 67.9.
At the national level, it is followed by the Tecnológico de Monterrey, which ranked 161st globally and 5th in Latin America, with a score of 48.2. In third place in the same category is Universidad Panamericana (551-560 globally); in fourth place is Universidad Anáhuac de México (601-650 globally) and in fifth place is Universidad Iberoamericana (701-750 globally). Mexico's top 10 also included the Universidad Autónoma de Metropolitana (UAM) and the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (UAEH).
Fourteen years ago, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) awarded UNAM the certificate that certifies the central campus, also known as "University City", as a World Heritage Site. The central campus was inaugurated in 1952 and currently has 773 hectares, 176 of which are inscribed by UNESCO. One of the most valued sites is the Central Library, which is one of the most photographed buildings in Latin America, as well as the University Stadium, the site of the Mexico 1968 Olympic Games.
Top 10 in the World
Globally, the QS World University Rankings 2022 maintains the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in first place for the tenth consecutive year, with a score of 100. The rest of the top 10 is as follows:
2- Oxford University, with 99.5
3- Stanford University, with 98.7
4- Cambridge University, with 98.7
5- Harvard University, with 98
6- California Institute of Technology (Caltech), with 97.4
7- Imperial College London, with 97.3
8- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, with 95.4
9- UCL, with 95.4
10- the University of Chicago, with 94.5
It should be noted that this top of the world is made up of five institutions located in the United States, four in the United Kingdom, and one in Switzerland. QS noted in its report that this year's rankings were released at a challenging time for the entire world, with the Covid-19 pandemic impacting both universities and students.
