Seven Chinese mainland universities and five Hong Kong universities ranked among the top 200 of the QS World University Rankings 2015/16.
Advertisement
The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have risen to be among the top 15 varsities in the world for the first time, according to Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rankings for 2015/2016 released on Tuesday (Sep 15).
In this year’s rankings Harvard University rose from fourth place to gazump Cambridge, putting it joint third with Stanford.
London has retained its title as the world’s top university city, with four institutions in the top 40 of the latest ranking.
“This improvement of 13 places in the QS rankings demonstrates recognition of our excellence in education and research by our peers and employers around the world”.
The National University of Singapore, the country’s oldest university with about 38,000 students, climbed from No. 22 to No. 12 this year.
Meanwhile, two other public universities – Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) – were also listed among the world’s best, with USM now ranked 289th from 309th in 2014 and 355th in 2013.
South Africa’s best faculty area performance is in the Arts and Humanities, featuring five universities in the top-400 for this faculty area, with the University of Cape Town holding on to a top-200 place, coming 122nd. They were the only two local universities that made the top 50. In 2011, HKU placed 22nd on the QS league tables, falling in subsequent years to 23rd in 2012 and 26th in 2013. It had been focusing on worldwide students, research funding and diversifying what they do in research and their teaching methods. And Gothenburg-based Chalmers University of Technology leaped from 175th to 132nd place.
Three Canadian universities figure in the top 50 this year, with McGill (24th) followed by the University of Toronto (34th) and the University of British Columbia (50th).
Ben Sowter, QS Head of Research, noted that “under this year’s refined methodology, some of Canada’s institutions face a year on year drop”, in their ranking.
Advertisement
The change is meant to reflect the influence achieved by each university in the research world, relative to the size of its faculty.
