Four Chinese Universities Listed in Top 50 in World Rankings

Times Higher Education released the 2016-2017 World University Rankings on September 21, 2016. 

Notes: the figures on the map refer to the top four countries with the highest number of institutions. The countries in white are those with no institutions in the 2016 ranking

The University of Oxford has become the first UK university to top the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in the 12-year history of the table. It knocks the five-time leader, the California Institute of Technology, into second place in the World University Rankings 2016-2017.

Four Chinese universities made their way into the Top 50 this year, with Peking University at 29th, Tsinghua University 35th, University of Hong Kong at 43rd, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology at 49th.

When looking at country level, nations in Asia stand out. Two new Asian universities make the top 100 (Chinese University of Hong Kong and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)), while another four join the top 200: City University of Hong Kong, University of Science and Technology of China, Fudan University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Furthermore, China’s two flagship universities have both made gains – Peking University joins the top 30 at 29th (up from 42nd last year), while Tsinghua University joins the top 40 at 35th (up from joint 47th). Asia’s leading institution, the National University of Singapore, is at 24th – its highest ever rank.

Overall, 289 Asian universities from 24 countries make the overall list of 980 institutions and an elite group of 19 are in the top 200, up from 15 last year.

When analysing which countries achieve the highest average scores, Singapore comes top on all five of the pillars underlying the ranking – teaching, research, citations, industry income and international outlook. Hong Kong is second for teaching, third for research and fourth for citations. 

Rajika Bhandari, deputy vice-president of research and evaluation at the Institute of International Education and co-editor of the book Asia: The Next Higher Education Superpower?, said that the “sharp rise” of Asia’s universities is due to three main factors: rapidly growing populations and demand for higher education in the region; governments making “significant investments” in universities; and improvements by individual institutions.

On advances at university level, she said that many Asian scholars who studied at Western universities are now academics in their home countries and have “really begun to transform their own higher education sectors”.

They have “brought back to [their] home campuses some of the teaching values of critical thinking and liberal education, as well as the idea of promotion based on merit and research outputs”, she said. - THE

Listing of mainland Chinese Universities in the Top 500 List

International picture

Analysis by each individual score highlights the stellar performance of Singapore across all factors, and shows the dominance of Europe and Asia in the World University Rankings

Browse the full list of the world's top-ranked universities in 2016-2017

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