On October, 31, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) published the ranking of Eastern Europe and Central Asia universities (EECA-2019). In 2019 the published part of the ranking included 300 best universities from 26 countries. The ranking is headed by three Russian universities: M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Novosibirsk Stata University and St. Petersburg State University.

Penza State University entered 300 top best universities again occupying the place in the group between 201-250. PSU shared this group with such universities as: Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University, Northern (Arctic) Federal University.

Among Russian university PSU occupied 57th place out of 86 universities, being ahead of such basic universities as Ulyanovsk State University, Petrozavodsk State University, Belgorod Shukhov State Technological University, Don State Technical University, Magnitogorsk State Technical University, etc.

PSU is the only Penza university in this ranking.

The ranking evaluated universities according to ten criteria:
- research reputation (30%; calculated by international survey of academicians);
- reputation among employers (20%; calculated by international survey of employers);
- teaching staff and students ration (10%; university and open sources data);
- internet resources efficiency (10%; Webometrics ranking data);
- publishing activity of teaching staff (10%; number of published articles per teacher, calculated by Scopus/Elsevier data);
- scientific citing of articles (5%; number of citations per article, calculated by Scopus/Elsevier data);
- number of teachers with academic degrees (5%; university and open sources data);
- online presence (5%);
- number of international teaching staff (2.5%; university and open sources data);
- number of international students (2.5%; university and open sources data).