UP rises to 70th in emerging economies university rankings

MANILA, Philippines — The University of the Philippines is now the 70th best university among emerging economies in the world, according to latest rankings released by London-based Times Higher Education.

UP continued its rise in the rankings, jumping 17 spots from 87th place last year. It ranked 166th in 2018.

The country’s top university improved its overall score to 37.5 out of 100, up from last year’s 32.8 points.

Meanwhile, De La Salle University ranked 351-400, down from last year’s 251-300.

It had an overall score of 19.1-20.8 points.

No other Philippine university entered the list that included 533 institutions from 47 countries.

The list ranks universities in countries classified by the Financial Times Stock Exchange as advanced emerging, secondary emerging or frontier economies.

Excluded are universities from advanced countries, including Singapore, the United States, United Kingdom and South Korea, which are home to some of the world’s top higher education institutions.

The Philippines is classified as a secondary emerging economy along with China, India, Indonesia and Russia.

Other eligible Southeast Asian countries were Malaysia and Thailand, which are advanced emerging economies, and Vietnam, which is classified as a frontier economy.

Chinese universities dominated the list with 81 institutions, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University and University of Science and Technology of China that ranked first to fourth, respectively.

They were followed by Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, Shanghai Jiao Tong and Fudan University in China, and the National Taiwan University.

Completing the top 10 are Nanjing University in China and the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

With its rise in the list, UP is now the second best performing higher education institution among emerging economies in Southeast Asia, after Malaysia’s University of Malaya that ranked 22nd.

UP overtook Malaysia’s Universiti Teknologi Petronas (78th, down from 60th), Thailand’s Mahindol University (79th, down from 68th), University of Indonesia (103rd, down from 82nd) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (111th, down from 86th).

The ranking is based on 13 performance indicators grouped into five areas: teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students and research) and industry income (knowledge transfer).