DESPITE CLIMBING 24 notches globally, the University of Santo Tomas remained the country’s fourth-best school for three consecutive years in the 2025 EduRank rankings.
UST ranked 2,628th among 14,131 institutions in the latest edition of the assessment, an improvement from its previous ranking of 2,652th in 2024. However, the University retained its no. 4 spot nationwide, a ranking it has carried since the 2023 edition.
The University of the Philippines (UP) remained the country’s top university after placing 1348th globally. It was followed by De La Salle University (1728th) and Ateneo de Manila University (1903rd).
UST continued to outperform UP Los Baños (2774th), University of the Philippines Manila (2843rd), University of San Carlos (4132nd), Mapua University (4626th).
Other ranked institutions in the country were Mindanao State University (4657th), Asian Institute of Management (4703rd), University of the Philippines in the Visayas (5401st) and Visayas State University (5416th). A total of 229 Philippine institutions were analyzed by the ranking agency.
EduRank assessed the institutions according to three factors: research performance, which assessed the publications and citations of the institutions (45%); non-academic prominence that looked into the backlinks to a university from other websites (45%); and the impact of their notable alumni, an indicator that assessed the number of Wikipedia page views on a university’s graduate and other affiliated individuals (10%).
The organization attributed a total of 4,424 academic publications and 50,469 citations to UST.
Research production drop
Data from the ranking agency showed that research publications produced by UST fell to 389 in 2024, lower by 192 than the previous year.
In 2023, UST broke its four-year momentum after tallying only 581 research papers, a drop from its peak of 632 in 2022. The España University saw the number of its research outputs increase from 2018 to 2022.
As of March 2, the University has so far produced a total of 75 publications, according to the EduRank database.
Despite the decline in research production, UST saw a significant increase in research citations, tallying a total of 8,315 citations in 2024 from 7,621 in the previous year.
Biology remained as UST’s top-contributing subject with 2,558 publications and 36,490 citations, placing the University at 5th place among Philippine institutions in the topical rankings of the subject.
It received the same ranking in liberal arts and social sciences (2,517 publications and 22,581 citations), but got a higher spot in medicine (4th) with fewer publications (2,400) and more citations (36,887).
UST subjects that retained placement were psychology (third), environmental science (6th), computer science (7th), mathematics (4th), arts and design (4th), business (4th), engineering (7th), economics (7th) and physics (7th). Chemistry slipped one spot from being 5th in 2024 to 6th this year.
Harvard University is still the top institution worldwide followed by Stanford University of California, University of Michigan — Ann Arbor and University of Oxford.
The EduRank is an independent metric-based ranking agency that uses a scholarly papers database to assess universities worldwide. F
