The universities of Ghent and Leuven still belong to the 100 best universities in the world. This has been confirmed by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). This ranking placed UGent in 62nd place, while KULeuven reached 93rd place in the list.
Belgian universities have scored well internationally for many years. Belgium is consistently ranked in the top 10 by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the area of higher education. The various university rankings confirm these figures. Among other things, the Chinese ARWU looks at the number of Nobel Prizes won by alumni, the number of academic prizes and the volume of scientific papers, in order to assess universities from around the whole world. In the 2016 list, UGent was in 62nd place, while KULeuven reached the 93rd spot.
UGent and KULeuven were not the only ones who achieved a good result, five other Belgian universities are also in the top 500 of the ARWU. The Université catholique de Louvain and the Université libre de Bruxelles are both ranked between 151st and 200th position, Universiteit Antwerpen and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel were between the 201st and 300th position, and the Université de Liège was between the 301st and 400th position. However, Anglo-Saxon higher education institutions have unassailable positions. Three American universities occupy the top 3 of the ARWU, whilst the Universität Zürich, in 19th position, is the highest ranking higher education institution from a non-English speaking country.
