University World Ranking

There are a few widely recognized world university ranking systems. The most widely recognized two ranking systems are the UK and US systems listed below. There are some other ranking systems available as well. This page (created in 2007) provides a general information, and does not intend to update regularly. Please refer to the respective ranking system web sites for the yearly update of new rankings.

Important note: University ranking is always an important issue, a hop topic in public, but a difficult task to accomplish. Existing ranking systems have their own merits, but shortcomings as well, argued frequently in the academic and social communities. In short, there exists no any ranking system which is 100%-fair due to its different ranking criteria specifically set. Whether you believe it or not is completely up to you yourself.

• British: The Times Higher Education Supplement World University Ranking
  (This system considers 40% weighting from peer-review, and thus makes most of the UK universities floating on the top, which were disagreed and disappointed by public).
  
  
  
  NUS accorded World's Top 20 universities ranking (7 October 2006)
  
  The National University of Singapore (NUS) has been ranked amongst the World's Top 20 and Top 3 universities in Asia in the QS World University Rankings 2006 conducted by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). In this annual ranking of the top 200 universities worldwide, NUS shared 2nd place in Asia and 19th spot overall with University of Tokyo.
  
  Harvard University topped the poll in which only three Asian universities – Beijing University, University of Tokyo and NUS – made it to the top 20.
  
  The list of Top 20 universities is given in the table below:
   

  World's Top 20 Universities
  1	Harvard University	11	University of Chicago
  2	University of Cambridge	12	Columbia University
  3	University of Oxford	13	Duke University
  4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	14	Beijing University
  4	Yale University	15	Cornell University
  6	Stanford University	16	Australian National University
  7	California Institute of Technology	17	London School of Economics and Political Science
  8	University of California, Berkeley	18	Ecole Normale Supérieure
  9	Imperial College London	19	National University of Singapore
  10	Princeton University	19	University of Tokyo

  
  The criteria used for this year's rankings include research quality (peer review by 3,703 academics who were asked to identify up to 30 universities best for research within their own field of expertise, and citations per faculty); teaching quality; graduate employability (recruiter review by 736 employers world-wide); and international outlook (international-to-total faculty and international students-to-total students ratios).

   

  Upon receiving the news, NUS President Professor Shih Choon Fong said, "We are encouraged and heartened to be ranked once again among the world's leading universities and one of Asia's top three. Our position within the top 20 this year is a recognition of NUS' global standing by the international community. In our continuing pursuit of excellence in education and research, NUS can contribute to Singapore's rising reputation and visibility in the global higher education landscape."

   

  Rankings by Disciplines

  NUS continues to be regarded highly in the major disciplines. It is among the world’s top 10 for Technology and Biomedicine, ranking 8th and 9th respectively. Amongst universities in Asia, NUS emerged second for Biomedicine and within the top three for Technology. The University made a significant leap in Science, jumping 12 spots from 34th last year to 22nd this year. Its ranking in Arts & Humanities also rose significantly from 56th last year to 22nd this year, taking second place in Asia. NUS is ranked 11th in the world and top in Asia for Social Sciences.

  
  NUS is among the world’s top 10 for Technology and Biomedicine, ranking 8th and 9th respectively.

World's Top 20 Technology Universities
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	11	Oxford University
2	University of California, Berkeley	12	ETH Zurich
3	Indian Institutes of Technology	13	Delft University of Technology
4	Imperial College London	14	Tsing Hua University
5	Stanford University	15	Nanyang Technological University
6	Cambridge University	16	Melbourne University
7	Tokyo University	17	Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
8	National University of Singapore	18	Tokyo Institute of Technology
9	California Institute of Technology	19	University of New South Wales
10	Carnegie Mellon University	20	Beijing University

 

World's Top 20 Biomedicine Universities
1	Cambridge University	11	Yale University
2	Harvard University	12	Tokyo University
3	Oxford University	13	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4	Imperial College London	14	Edinburgh University
5	Stanford University	14	University of California, San Diego
6	Johns Hopkins University	16	University College London
7	Melbourne University	17	Kyoto University
8	Beijing University	18	University of Toronto
9	National University of Singapore	19	Monash University
10	University of California, Berkeley	20	Sydney University

• American: Newsweek Global University Ranking
  (This system ranked only recently, but primarily used some components of the Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiaotong University). 
  
  

  NUS amongst top three global universities in Asia and Australasia

   

  The National University of Singapore (NUS) emerged as one of the top three global universities in Asia and Australasia in a ranking of global league universities by international magazine Newsweek. NUS was ranked 31st in the world. The Japanese universities emerged tops in Asia with Tokyo University in the first place (14th in the world ranking), followed by Kyoto University (25th in the world ranking). In the world ranking, Harvard University was in the top position, followed by Stanford and Yale universities.

   

  According to Newsweek, universities have become more global in response to the same forces which have propelled the world economy toward global integration. They seek students from around the world and send their own students abroad to prepare them for global careers; offer courses which address challenges of an inter-connected world; and conduct collaborative research programmes. Capturing these developments, the ranking of global universities was based on openness and diversity as well as distinction in research.

   

  The universities were also evaluated on some measures used in the rankings by Shanghai Jiaotong University such as number of highly-cited researchers and number of articles published in Nature and Science; and the Times of London Higher Education Supplement survey which includes percentage of international faculty, percentage of international students and ratio of faculty to students.

   

  NUS President Professor Shih Choon Fong said that the latest ranking was in recognition of the University’s 'pursuit of global excellence in education and research, which is attributed to our culture of imagination, openness and courage.' "This is a call to further raise Singapore's reputation and visibility in the global education landscape," he added.

   

  NUS amongst top three global universities in Asia and Australasia (16 August 2006)

• Others Ranking Systems: There are some other ranking systems, for instance,

  1. Academic Ranking of World University
     
     by Shanghai Jiaotong University. The criteria defined are not so directly relevant or fair to universities ranking, such as (a) the number of Nobel laureates (not the university's primary goal), (b) the number of most-highly cited people, and (c) the number of papers published in Nature and Science magazines, where social science and humanities are excluded. The system is apparently instable because a couple of individuals could change a university's position so drastically, for instance, the position of this university floats too drastically, when someone from this university will become a Nobel laureate or the ISI most-highly cited people. From scientific and technology points of view, any system with a large fluctuation based on a small deviation will be poor and impractical one. It is a Chinese ranking system, but most of the Chinese do not accept it, and nor does the Chinese government (i.e., the Ministry of Education of China).

   

  2. Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities
     
     by Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan. This system ranks universities according to their performance in terms of scientific papers published. It implements 20% for research productivity, 30% for research impact, and 50% for research excellence, using the data collected from ISI database. It uses the last year's or last 2 years' data to fine-tune the yearly variation in the ranking, therefore, there is no much in argument. However, all the data were collected for the individual entire university, which were not divided by the number of academic staff of that particular university, making that the larger the university, the more advantageous the university in the ranking which is not fair to the smaller but strong universities such as CalTech and Princeton Univ.