From Tsinghua to Harvard: What it costs to study at the world’s top 30 universities for engineering
According to the 2026 Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject, released in January, eight of the top 30 engineering institutions are located in Asia, while the remainder are based in the United States and Europe.
Harvard University retained the top position, scoring a near-perfect 99.7 out of 100 for research environment, followed by Oxford, MIT and Stanford.
U.S. institutions account for half of the top 30, with annual tuition fees ranging from $33,600 to $71,300.
Tuition at the top 30 engineering universities worldwide in 2026 are as followed:
Rank | University | Country | Tuition (USD/year) |
1 | Harvard University | U.S. | 59,300 |
2 | University of Oxford | UK | 85,800 |
3 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | U.S. | 64,300 |
4 | Stanford University | U.S. | 67,700 |
5 | University of Cambridge | UK | 59,700 |
6 | University of California, Berkeley | U.S. | 22,300 |
7 | California Institute of Technology | U.S. | 65,600 |
8 | Peking University | China | 4,300 |
9 | Princeton University | U.S. | 68,100 |
10 | National University of Singapore | Singapore | 30,600 |
11 | ETH Zurich | Switzerland | 5,500 |
12 | Imperial College London | UK | 58,500 |
13 | Tsinghua University | China | 4,300 |
14 | Nanyang Technological University | Singapore | 14,200 |
15 | Georgia Institute of Technology | U.S. | 33,600 |
16 | Delft University of Technology | Netherlands | 23,700 |
17 | Yale University | U.S. | 69,900 |
18 | University of California, Los Angeles | U.S. | 54,900 |
19 | Technical University of Munich | Germany | 4,800-7,100 |
20 | Carnegie Mellon University | U.S. | 67,000 |
21 | Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne | Switzerland | 5,700 |
22 | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | U.S. | 58,700 |
23 | Zhejiang University | China | 3,600 |
24 | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | China | 3,600 |
25 | University of Toronto | Canada | 51,700 |
26 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | U.S. | 47,800 |
27 | Cornell University | U.S. | 71,300 |
28 | University of Texas at Austin | U.S. | 48,400 |
29 | University of Tokyo | Japan | 4,100 |
30 | Columbia University | U.S. | 70,170 |
In Asia, universities in China and Japan charge significantly lower tuition, from $3,600 per year at Zhejiang and Shanghai Jiao Tong universities and $4,300 at Peking and Tsinghua.
European universities generally offer more moderate tuition levels, between $4,800 and $7,100 annually. An exceptional case is the U.K.’s Oxford, which tops the tuition chart by charing $85,800.
The 2026 engineering ranking evaluates universities across five core disciplines: general engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, mechanical and aerospace engineering, civil engineering, and chemical engineering.
A campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Photo coutersy of the university |
A total of 1,555 universities from 98 countries and territories were assessed using five performance indicators. The largest weighting is assigned to research environment (29%), followed by teaching (28%), research quality (27.5%), industry income and technology transfer (8%), and international outlook (7.5%).
To qualify for inclusion, universities must have published at least 500 engineering-related research papers between 2000 and 2024 and employ a minimum of 40 academic staff in engineering, representing at least 4% of total faculty.
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