The Times Higher Education Ranking System evaluates young universities (universities less than 50 years old) according to their core missions including teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international perspectives, and publishes a list of the world's top young universities each year. The evaluation methodology of young universities is based on the same 13 performance indicators as that of the general evaluation of world universities within the five criteria of education (30%), research (30%), citations (30%), international prestige (7.5%) and income from industry (2.5%) and indicates changes in the amount of weight distributed between the indicators.

The World Times Young Universities 2022 rankings list includes 539 universities from 74 countries which is a significant increase compared to last year’s 475 universities from 68 countries. In this ranking system, PSL University of France, Nanyang University of Technology Singapore and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology were ranked first to third, respectively. According to the results of this ranking, the number of Iranian universities has increased from 26 universities in 2021 to 37 universities in 2022.

In the THE rankings, University of Kurdistan is positioned 189^th in the Young Universities of the World listings while its overall national ranking is 10 among all Iranian universities (comprehensive, industrial and medical sciences) and 3^rd among comprehensive universities of the country.

University global rankings now play a central role in promoting academic, cultural, social, and political links between countries so that students, universities, and governments are basing many of their decisions on these rankings. University rankings have become an important benchmark for global competitiveness since universities are looking to form partnerships with world-leading universities based on these rankings. The standards and indicators designated by ranking systems have not only impacted national policy-making and institutional behaviors but also reshaped higher education systems.