U-Ranking report

The U-Ranking (Synthetic Indicators of Spanish Universities) 2025 report presents the results of the thirteenth edition of the project, based on the analysis of universities’ activities in teaching, research and innovation and labour market results, offering a classification of the Spanish universities for each dimension and for the total of university activities.

What does this report contain?

This document describes the methodology developed for constructing the indicators and indices used to create the various rankings, based on the study of the universities’ activities in teaching, research and innovation, and for the first time, their labor market results. The XIII edition of U-Ranking analyzes 72 Spanish universities—all public and 24 private—and ranks them according to the different perspectives considered by the project: Performance, Volume, Dimensions, and, in this edition, Areas of Study. The report includes all the rankings, examines performance and volume results in detail, and compares them with other well-known rankings to evaluate their similarities and differences. The report shows the teaching, research and innovation and labor market results of the universities and provides an analysis of the sensitivity of the results to changes in the importance given to these activities. It compares the results achieved by public versus private universities and, finally, analyzes the differences in performance of the university systems of the different Spanish regions are analyzed.

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U-Ranking Analysis

The U-Ranking (Synthetic Indicators of the Spanish University System) 2025 report presents the thirteenth edition of the results of the universities in their teaching, research and innovation activities and labor market results. Download the complete report or a summary of the main conclusions.

The tenth edition of U-Ranking includes 48 public and 24 private universities that have provided sufficient information of adequate quality, so that the data is homogeneous with that of public universities in order to construct synthetic indicators. Therefore, this year’s edition analyses a total of 72 universities, representing 98% of the Spanish university system in terms of undergraduate students.

The results of the U-Ranking of Spanish Universities are presented under two different approaches:

U-Ranking

Ranks the universities according to their performance, eliminating the size factor

U-Ranking Volume

Ranks the universities according to their total volume of results

The acronyms used for each university are the following:

Global rankings

U-Ranking

U-Ranking classifies Spanish universities according to their performance (in teaching, research and innovation and labor market results), eliminating the size factor to compare universities.

Along with the ordered list of universities, an index is provided with a scale where the university with the highest performance obtains a value of 100, and the rest of the universities can obtain values ranging from 99 to 0, depending on their distance from the highest index. The universities are grouped according to the decile of their obtained score, with a maximum of 10 groups. Within each group, there are universities with similar results, and differences between groups should be considered more significant than those within the same group.

U-Ranking Performance classification is as follows:

  • Ranking
    Index
    University
  • G1
    100
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra
  • G1
    95
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
  • G1
    93
    Universitat Politècnica de València
  • G1
    92
    Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • G1
    92
    Universitat de Barcelona
  • G1
    90
    Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • G1
    90
    Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • G1
    90
    Universidad de Navarra
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Universities without score were not analyzed due to lack of information
(*) Universities younger than 15

U-Ranking vs U-Ranking Volume

The comparison of our two main rankings once again shows a group that appears at the top of the rankings in the areas that have been examined. The shaded area of the figure contains a group of 15 universities which stand out in U-Ranking, both for their high performance and great volume of results. From this point of view, there is a group of universities that show the best practices in the university system. In turn, the universities listed in the Shanghai Ranking have been highlighted in a dark blue color. The results are very clear, almost all the universities in the shaded area which have the best results in volume and performance in U-Ranking also appear in the Shanghai Ranking.

The 22 universities that stand out in terms of performance and/or volume of results represent 30% of the institutions analyzed in the U-Ranking, yet they generate 59% of the total results of the Spanish University System (SUE). If we break down the three dimensions considered by U-Ranking, this group accounts for 55% of teaching outcomes, 63% of research output, and 54% of employment outcomes.
Among these, 8 institutions stand out both for their performance—meaning their efficiency in resource use—and for their size. They represent 11% of the universities included in the 2025 U-Ranking, but contribute 26% of the SUE’s total results: 23% of teaching outcomes, 30% of research and innovation output, and 22% of employment outcomes.

U-Ranking Volume vs Shanghai Ranking

The figure compares the results of U-Ranking Volume with the results of Shanghai Ranking, the most cited international ranking, which is also based mainly on variables that are not corrected for size. For this analysis, we rank 36 Spanish universities listed in the top 1,000 of the 2024 Shanghai Ranking by the five standardized indicators published by ARWU, allowing for a better comparison. Although there is some discrepancy, partly because U-Ranking Volume considers the role of teaching, there is a great deal of similarities between both classifications. The universities listed in the Shanghai Ranking Top 500 are highlighted in the figure.

Note: The results of the 2024 Shanghai Ranking correspond to an adaptation for 36 Spanish universities included in the ranking, based on their scores in the five indicators used by the ranking and their relative position compared to the highest-scoring university.,

U-Ranking vs Shanghai Ranking

The similarities between U-Ranking and Shanghai Ranking are not as obvious as those observed with U-Ranking Volume, since the Shanghai Ranking hardly takes into account the differences in size. However, both rankings coincide in the universities which are at the top of the Spanish system and located mainly in the first tercile of both classifications.

Note: The results of the 2024 Shanghai Ranking correspond to an adaptation for 36 Spanish universities included in the ranking, based on their scores in the five indicators used by the ranking and their relative position compared to the highest-scoring university.,

U-Ranking (Performance and Volume) vs Shanghai Ranking

The following figure compares the results of the universities ranked in the top 15 positions of U-Ranking, U-Ranking Volume and TOP 500 Shanghai Ranking. Of the 72 universities analyzed, 22 appear in the top positions of at least one of the three rankings. Intersections are frequent, but differences exist. The diagram identifies a group of five universities that are in the leading group of all three rankings. Another seight universities are in the top positions in two of the rankings, and finally, ten other universities are highlighted by only one of the three criteria considered.

Teaching,
Research and Innovation,
and Labor Market insertion rankings

U-Ranking for teaching

The following classification focuses on the performance in teaching activities of Spanish universities.

  • Ranking
    Index
    University
  • G1
    100
    Universidad de Navarra
  • G1
    97
    Universitat Ramon Llull
  • G1
    94
    IE Universidad
  • G1
    93
    Mondragon Unibertsitatea
  • G1
    93
    Universitat Politècnica de València
  • G1
    92
    Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
  • G1
    92
    Universidad Pontificia Comillas
  • G1
    91
    Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
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(*) Universities younger than 15

U-Ranking for teaching vs
U-Ranking for research and innovation

U-Ranking for Teaching vs
U-Ranking for Labor Market insertion

U-Ranking for Teaching and innovation vs
U-Ranking for Labor Market insertion

U-Ranking by AA. CC.

The performance of
regional university systems

The figure shows the averages of the U-Ranking 2024 index for all on-site universities, both public and private, in each region. There are large differences in performance among regional university systems, reaching up to 35.9 percentage points between the one with the highest performance and the one with the lowest.

2024 and 2025 comparison

The results obtained by universities in 2024 are highly correlated with those presented in the previous edition. The results confirm the remarkable stability of U-Ranking and U-Ranking Volume with few exceptions.

U-Ranking

U-Ranking Volume

Postgraduate Ranking

U-Ranking 2022 offers a specific analysis of postgraduate studies - master and doctorate - in the universities of the Spanish University System.The report shows the evolution of these studies in the last decade and their different structure depending on the ownership of the university and area of study.

The analysis is completed with the elaboration of a synthetic index based on 12 indicators that evaluate the performance of universities in the areas of the training process, quality, internationalization and employability of their postgraduate programs. This index allows Spanish universities to be ordered according to performance of their postgraduate studies, offering six postgraduate rankings: one for each area of study and another global that groups the information of all of them.


You can consult the complete analysis in the 2022 U-Ranking report


Global

  • Ranking
    Index
    University
  • 1
    1.5
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra
  • 2
    1.4
    Universidad de Navarra
  • 2
    1.4
    Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • 2
    1.4
    Universitat Ramon Llull
  • 3
    1.3
    Universitat Rovira i Virgili
  • 3
    1.3
    Universidad Carlos III
  • 3
    1.3
    Universidad de Salamanca
  • 3
    1.3
    Universitat de Barcelona
  • 3
    1.3
    Universidad Pontificia Comillas
  • 3
    1.3
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
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(*) Universities younger than 15

Changes in the bachelor’s degree programs offered

Bachelor’s degrees created and eliminated in the last decade

The ninth edition of U-Ranking included a specific analysis of the changes in the offer of bachelor’s degree programs between the academic years 2010-2011 and 2020-2021, which considers their intensity in the different fields of knowledge, type of teaching/learning mode, differences between public and private centres, and how well the new offering meets the demands of students and the labor market.

From academic year 2010-2011 to 2020-2021, 1,760 bachelor’s degrees have been added and 629 have been discontinued, so the net increase during the period was 1,131 degrees, 44% more than in 2010. Most of the new degrees already existed in the SUE, but there are 190, between bachelor’s degrees and double degrees, which are new. Check the complete analysis in the U-Ranking 2021 report.

The launch of new degrees is strongly taking place in both public and private universities. However, although the total volume of new bachelor’s degrees is higher in public ones, with 716 new degrees in a decade compared to 415 in private universities, these ones have experienced a higher relative growth due, to a large extent, to the fact that many private universities have been recently created and are still in the process of structuring their degree offers.