Singapore Institution Tops Again in 2015 QS Asia University Rankings

(Source: QS University Rankings: Asia 2015)

On the other hand, the Chinese has 25 institutions among the top 100 in Asia, far outstripping its big neighbour – India with 9. Peking University steps into the top seventh this year while Tsinghua University rises from 14th to 11th.

“The majority of the ranked Chinese institutions are increasing their research output, spurred by the impressive and sustained level of public and private investment, second only to the US. However, the country’s leading universities are still lagging behind in terms of research citation numbers, which reveal the impact of the research they produce,” said Ben Sowter, head of research at QS.

Addressing India’s mediocre ranking performances, Sowter explained that the indian universities did not have the luxury of enjoying large funding compared to their Chinese counterparts.

In Malaysia, the University of Malaya (UM) has successfully broken into the top 30 list. The nation’s oldest university was 20 spots ahead of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which took the 49th place, up from 57th place a year earlier. Sowter highlighted that Malaysia’s focus on education and innovation is reflected in the improvements in ranking among the country’s top universities.

The other Asian countries featured in the top 300 are: Thailand with 11 universities, Pakistan with 10 universities, both Hong Kong and Indonesia with 7 universities respectively, Philippines with 4 universities, Bangladesh with 2 universities, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Vietnam and Macau with 1 university each.

Note: The QS Asia University Rankings grades the top 300 tertiary education institutions in Asia on nine key performance indicators, including academic reputation (30%), employer reputation (10%), faculty/student ratio (20%), citations per paper (15%), papers per faculty (15%), proportion of international faculty (2.5%) and students (2.5%), and the proportion of inbound (2.5%) and outbound exchange students (2.5%).