Despite only one Belgian university making it into the top 100 of the 2025 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking, a recent study led by researchers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) challenges the accuracy of such rankings.
The study suggests that when factors such as university size and more objective indicators are considered, Belgium’s universities perform far better than their global rankings suggest.
In the 2025 edition of THE’s ranking, only KU Leuven, Belgium’s largest university, placed in the top 100, ranking 43rd out of 2,000 institutions.
The next Belgian university, Ghent University (UGent), ranked 112th, with institutions such as UAntwerpen and VUB falling further down the list.
However, VUB’s Vice-Chancellor for Research, Pieter Ballon, has raised concerns about the methodology of these rankings, arguing that they provide a distorted picture of educational quality.
Methodological Concerns
In THE’s ranking system, 33% of a university’s score is based on reputation in research and teaching, with research productivity only accounting for a small 5.5%.
Ballon argues that this heavy weighting toward reputation benefits universities that spend more on marketing or are already well-established, rather than reflecting true quality.
“Rankings are supposed to represent quality, but when they rely heavily on reputation rather than actual output, they can be misleading,” Ballon said in an interview with The Brussels Times.
Another issue raised by the study is the lack of consideration for the size of universities. Ballon noted that larger universities, by virtue of their size, are more likely to publish more papers or be better known internationally.
Yet, the rankings do not adequately adjust for scale, which creates an unfair comparison between larger and smaller institutions.
A Closer Look at Belgian Universities
The VUB-led study sought to rectify these issues by comparing the performance of four Flemish universities—KU Leuven, UGent, UAntwerpen, and VUB—to European universities of similar sizes.
This analysis focused on objective indicators like scientific publication output and the acquisition of European research grants.
The results were striking. VUB, with 21,200 students and 3,274 researchers, ranked 14th in scientific publications when compared to 154 similarly-sized European universities.
KU Leuven, with 65,526 students and 10,432 researchers, ranked fifth in the broader category of larger universities. When it came to securing European research grants, all four Belgian universities ranked in the top ten.
“These are exceptional performances, and they show that Belgian universities are far more competitive than their rankings suggest,” Ballon said.
A Misleading Picture
Ballon emphasized that the point of the study was not to claim one Flemish university is superior to another but to show that when compared fairly, all four universities analyzed rank among Europe’s elite.
“If people rely solely on global rankings, they might believe there is a significant difference in quality between institutions like KU Leuven and UGent or VUB and UAntwerpen, but this isn’t true,” Ballon explained. “The supposed differences in quality quickly disappear when size is considered.”
The Takeaway for Prospective Students
Ballon urged students to approach rankings with caution and to consider factors like university size and spending on marketing when interpreting results. “If you filter out size and marketing factors, you’ll get a clearer picture of the actual quality,” he advised.
In response to the criticism, THE stated that many of its metrics are scaled by the size of institutions to avoid penalizing smaller universities.
However, the organization maintains that its rankings balance data from academic reputation surveys with bibliometrics and other metrics.
As Belgian universities continue to shine in more nuanced evaluations, the VUB study raises important questions about how educational quality is measured and perceived on the global stage.
