14th of October 2025
This year, the Moscow International University Ranking “The Three University Missions” (MosIUR) includes 2000 higher education institutions (HEIs) from 112 countries.
In 2025, Europe surpassed Asia in terms of representation in the Three University Missions ranking for the first time since 2022. European countries are represented by 637 universities, while there are only 632 Asian universities. North America accounts for 294 universities, Russia for 156 universities and South America for 113 universities. In terms of growth, Asian countries show negative results (-7 universities) and African countries (-5 universities).
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the leader of the ranking for the second time in a row.
The leader is followed by the Harvard University (#2), the University of Oxford (#3), the University of Cambridge (#4) and the Stanford University (#5), displacing the University College London.
The composition of the top 20 global rankings has remained virtually unchanged for the past three years. The only exception this year was the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, which rose to 19th place and displaced the University of Washington.
About the rating "The Three University Missions"
The Moscow International Ranking “The Three University Missions” (MosIUR) is a fundamentally new academic ranking that, for the very first time in international practice, assesses all three key missions of a university: education, science and interaction with society. Over 100 universities took part in the large-scale public discussion of the ranking methodology. The ranking uses only objective criteria, based on official data (including universities’ public reports), as well as data from reputable international information providers. Reputational surveys are excluded completely.
The rating was initiated by the Russian Union of Rectors and the Association of Rating Makers. The pilot version of the “Three Missions” was published December 2017.
The ranking was audited by the PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, part of the global PwC network.
