UP jumps 30 spots in Asia university rankings

MANILA, Philippines — The University of the Philippines is now the 65th best among almost 500 higher education institutions in Asia, jumping 30 spots in the latest university rankings released by London-based Times Higher Education (THE).

It was at 95th spot last year, 156th in 2018 and belonged to the 201st to 250th spots in 2017.

De La Salle University, which debuted in the list last year at 251st to 300th spots, dropped to 301st to 350th.

No other Philippine university is in the rankings.

With the entry of the Universiti Brunei Darussalam at 60th place this year, UP – which was fourth best in Southeast Asia last year – now ranks fifth in the region.

Other Southeast Asian universities ahead of UP are the National University of Singapore (NUS) at third overall, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) also in Singapore at sixth and Malaysia’s University of Malaya at 43rd.

Thailand’s Mahindol University ranked 122nd, while the University of Indonesia was at 162nd spot.

The THE ranked over 400 universities in 27 countries and territories in Asia using 13 performance indicators grouped into five areas. These were teaching (learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), industry income (knowledge transfer) and international outlook (staff, students and research).

China’s Tsinghua University retained its lead, followed by Peking University (up from fifth), NUS (down from second), University of Hong Kong (no change) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (down from third).

NTU retained its sixth spot, followed by the University of Tokyo in Japan (up from eighth), Chinese University of Hong Kong (down from seventh) and Seoul National University in South Korea (no change).

South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University retained its 10th spot and tied with the University of Science and Technology of China (up from 12th).

Japan is again the most-represented nation in the list with 110 institutions, up from 103 last year.

The Macau University of Science and Technology is the top new entry in the table, debuting at 32nd place.