World University Rankings
“No other country will be happier than Korea about the world university rankings for the last ten years,” said a representative of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a British global university evaluation institution, when announcing the results for 2014 on Sept. 15.
Since QS first published the world university rankings in 2004, Korean universities have grown remarkably. Together with Korean universities, “other Asian universities have improved” in Singapore, China and Hong Kong. However, QS pointed out that Korean universities have to enhance their levels of globalization in order to become the world’s best.
In 2008, when global financial crisis started, the University of Tokyo was ranked 19th and Seoul National University was 50th. But Seoul National University closed this large gap in just six years. Martin Ince, chair of the Advisory Board for the Rankings, said, “Ranking change of Seoul National University and the University of Tokyo shows how much the status of Korean universities went up in the Southeast Asian region.”
Seoul National University was behind the University of Tokyo in “academic peer review,” “recruiter review,” “faculty student ratio,” and “citations per faculty” out of a total of six assessment indexes. However, Seoul National University beat the University of Tokyo in “percentage of international students” and “percentage of international staff.” The world university rankings calculate scores of each university with a weighted scale: 40 percent is academic peer review, 20 percent is citations per faculty, 20 percent is faculty student ratio, 10 percent is recruiter review, 5 percent is the percentage of international students, and 5 percent is the percentage of international staff.
Both KAIST (51st) and POSTECH (86th), universities specialized in science and technology, jumped up by nine and 21 rankings respectively compared to last year. The two universities are constantly showing good performances in citations per faculty.
Yonsei University was ranked 106th, eight steps higher than last year, and Korea University was ranked 116th, 29 steps higher than last year. Sungkyunkwan University became the 140th best university this year from 162nd last year. Sungkyunkwan University was selected as one of the ten universities which rankings improved the most in the QS world university rankings since 2009.
Not only Korean but also other Asian universities have jumped very high in the last ten years. In 2005, only eight Asian universities were part of the top 50 universities in the world, but this year there are 11. In 2005, only 11 Asian universities were in top 100 universities worldwide, but this year there are 25. According to the report, one of the reasons why Asian universities, including Korean ones, are doing well internationally is “the government’s constant investment in college education.”
After analyzing the world university rankings this year, it was pointed out that all Asian including Korean universities have weaknesses in “globalization.”
Hanyang University, which has the highest percentage of international students in Korea, received 76.5 points and ranked 150th globally. Following Seoul National University, KAIST and POSTECH were 219th, 509th, and 609th respectively. Even though POSTECH has the highest percentage of international staff in Korea, it was only in 265th place worldwide. Both Yonsei University and Korea University are below the top 400.
The world’s best university was Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S., followed by the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London of the U.K. Harvard University of the U.S. was the second best university last year, but dropped to fourth this year. Among Asian universities, the National University of Singapore (NUS) was ranked highest at 22nd place. The University of Hong Kong (28th), the University of Tokyo (31st and tied with Seoul National University), Kyoto University (36th) and Nanyang Technological University (39th) followed.