Photo: Noah Berger

UC Berkeley placed No. 5 globally in the Times Higher Education’s (THE) 2026 Business and Economics Ranking.

With the new ranking, UC Berkeley joins the top five-ranked universities: MIT (No. 1), Stanford University (No. 2), Tsinghua University (No. 3), and the University of Oxford (No. 4).

THE, the parent company of Poets&Quants, weighs metrics related to teaching, research, industry partnerships, and international presence in this ranking of the world’s top universities for business and economics.

The ranking considers performance across three core disciplines: business and management, accounting and finance, and economics and econometrics. 

UC Berkeley’s ranking rose in 2026 due to a 7.5-point jump in research quality; the university topped all top 50 schools with a research quality score of 91.5.

This year, THE evaluated 1,067 schools across 91 countries and territories, measuring five core evaluation areas, including:

Teaching, including teaching reputation, student-to-staff ratio, doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio, doctorate-to-staff ratio, and institutional income. 

Research Environment, including research reputation, income, and productivity.

Research Quality, including citation impact, research strength, research excellence, and influence. (Universities must produce at least 200 published research papers to be considered for the ranking.)

Industry, including income from industry partnerships and patents.

International Outlook, including international students, staff, and co-authorship.

Read more about the THE methodology here.