QS ranking 2021, published in 2020, offers some useful insights about the performance of the Italian University system as a whole.

The Italian system is the 7h in the World as far as numerical consistency of its HEIs, as ranked in QS. Only the US, UK, China, Australia, Japan, and Germany do better.

With some 35 HEIs ranked. or 45% of the total, the university landscape in Italy looks healthy.

Overall, though, Italy is positioned 21st in the World as far as quality is concerned, as Italy places more institutions in lower positions if compared to other university systems.

For example, in QS ranking Italy has no HEIs in the first 100 positions;  and only 3 in the first 200.

The same considerations made for ARWU and for THE in other posts apply here. The overall numerical consistency of the system does not couple with the presence of top 100 institutions, that would identify Italy as a top 10 system worldwide.

 

QS 2021 COUNTRY	Top100	101-200	201-300	301-400	401-500	501-1000	Total
United States	27	18	14	12	15	65	151
United Kingdom	18	8	8	10	5	35	84
China + HK + Macau	11	1	6	7	7	26	58
Australia	7	4	6	4	5	10	36
South Korea	6	1	2	2	4	14	29
Japan	5	5	1	2	2	25	40
France	3	2	5	3	1	14	28
Switzerland	3	4	1	0	1	1	10
Germany	3	9	4	7	7	15	45
Canada	3	4	5	2	3	9	26
Netherlands	2	7	3	1	0	0	13
Singapore	2	0	0	0	0	1	3
Sweden	2	3	1	2	0	0	8
Belgium	1	3	2	0	2	1	9
Denmark	1	2	0	2	0	0	5
Russia	1	0	6	6	4	11	28
New Zealand	1	1	3	2	1	0	8
Taiwan	1	1	4	2	4	4	16
Argentina	1	0	0	1	2	8	12
Malaysia	1	4	0	2	1	12	20

 

Italy

0

3

1

4

2

25

35

 

Check out the 2021 QS rankings here.