In the 2024 World University Rankings released by the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), Harvard University has been consecutively ranked as the best global university for 13 years. The ranking, now in its 13th year, selects the top 2,000 universities from a pool of 20,966 worldwide.
In the 2024 World University Rankings published by the British education magazine "Times Higher Education" (THE), the highest-ranked Japanese university is the University of Tokyo, which is ranked 29th. This is an improvement from its 39th position last year. The second-highest ranked university is Kyoto University, which is ranked 55th (compared to 68th last year). Other universities that made it into the top 200 include Tohoku University (130th), Osaka University (175th), and Tokyo Institute of Technology (191st). The rankings for Japanese universities have significantly improved from the previous year due to revisions in evaluation criteria and the addition of the "patent contributions" category.