By Zhang Zhixiang  Updated: 2025-08-15

On August 15, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, a globally recognized authority in higher education evaluation, officially released the “2025 Academic Ranking of World Universities” (ARWU). It covers 1,000 top universities worldwide, with 200 institutions from mainland China featured. Southwest Petroleum University ranked 633^rd globally and 134^th among mainland Chinese universities, securing the top position among universities under Sichuan provincial administration. Compared to ranking of 2024, SWPU climbed 180 places in the global ranking and 26 places in the mainland China ranking.

SWPU climbs in global rankings (sourced from ShanghaiRanking)

SWPU rankings among universities in mainland China (sourced from ShanghaiRanking)

In recent years, Southwest Petroleum University has vigorously implemented the “Scientific and Technological Innovation Capacity Enhancement Plan”. We focus on major national energy strategy fields, strengthen international exchanges and cooperation, consolidate our traditional strengths in petroleum and natural gas, and intensified research in frontier fields such as deep-earth and deep-sea exploration, shale oil and gas, natural gas hydrates, and CCUS. In this way, we have fostered a “dual-engine” development model grounded in traditional oil and gas disciplines and driven by breakthroughs in new energy disciplines. SWPU ranks 494^th globally in the “Highly Cited Researchers” indicator and 461^st worldwide in international paper ranking.

ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a world-leading higher education evaluation institution. First released in 2003, ARWU stands as one of the world's most influential and authoritative university rankings. Countries such as the UK, France, Japan, the Netherlands, and Russia utilize ARWU rankings as a benchmark in their talent recruitment policies. World-class institutions, such as the University of Manchester and the University of Western Australia, have explicitly set improving their ARWU rankings as strategic objectives in their institutional planning.

(sourced from ShanghaiRanking)