The University of Arizona has again been recognized as one of the best public research institutions by Times Higher Education.

The U of A ranked No. 21 among U.S. public colleges and universities and No. 44 in the U.S. in Times Higher Education's World University Rankings 2027, released Tuesday. It is the third consecutive year the U of A has earned a spot among the nation's top 25 public universities.

The U of A again placed No. 1 among universities in the Southwest – Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Utah – and held its No. 15 ranking among state flagship universities.

In this year's edition, 2,297 universities (106 more than last year) from 118 countries and territories are ranked. The U of A ranks in the top 6% globally. The university's best scores came in the categories of research quality (86.1 out of a possible 100) and industry engagement (80.6).

The U of A also ranked in the top 100 globally in physical sciences, placing No. 45 globally – a five-spot improvement from last year's mark. The U of A ranks No. 20 in the U.S. and No. 8 among public colleges and universities.

Times Higher Education has been evaluating global colleges and universities for more than two decades. For this year's ranking, Times Higher Education assessed research-intensive universities across 18 performance indicators in the following five categories, with varying weight given to each:

• Teaching: 29.5%
• Research environment: 29%
• Research quality: 30%
• International outlook: 7.5%
• Industry (income and patents): 4%

This year's rankings examined 175 million citations across 18.7 million research publications and included survey responses from tens of thousands of scholars globally.