No PH university makes it to this year’s list of top 400 schools worldwide
by Mark Pere Madrona
As of this writing, no local media outlet has reported on this.
A newly published report (dated October 6, 2011) by British magazine Times Higher Education indicate that no Philippine higher education institution made it to the list of top 400 universities in the world for 2011. This comes a month after a similar report released by Quacquarelli Symonds, another education organization also based in the United Kingdom, showed that the two Philippine universities which made it to last year’s top 300 list – Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines – fell sharply from their previous rankings.
The year’s top five universities are the following: California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, and Princeton University. University of Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Imperial London College, University of Chicago, and University of California-Berkeley complete the top ten. The highest ranked Asian university is Japan’s University of Tokyo (30th) followed by University of Hong Kong (34th), National University of Singapore (40th) and China’s Peking University (49-50). There are 62 Asian universities in this year’s top 400 list.
According to the Times Higher Education website, universities were ranked based on 13 separate performance indicators “designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer.” The 13 elements were further classified into the following five headline categories:
- Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
- Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
- Citations — research influence (worth 30 per cent)
- Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
- International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).
For the second straight year, The Times teamed up with finance giant Thomson Reuters to do data analysis and the ranking. The Times and Quacquarelli Symonds did the rankings together from 2004 up to 2010. “Expert input” from more than 50 leading figures in the sector from 15 countries across every continent were also utilized for this study. This ranking system, the website states, is “the gold standard in international university performance comparisons.”
For his part, Dr. Jose Wendell Capili, Director of UP’s Office of Alumni Relations, said that similar to previous years, the state university did not participate for this year’s survey. He added that UP may join in such surveys soon, but “the decision to participate will come from UP system president Alfredo Pascual and his executive staff (the vice presidents) and chancellors like UP Diliman chancellor Caesar Saloma,” and after very hard internal and external preparations.
On separate occasions the past few years, officials of higher-ranked Philippine universities have voiced reservations about these rankings for various reasons. This includes Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido Niebres (http://www.ateneo.edu/index.php?p=120&type=2&aid=4489), UP vice president for public affairs Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo (http://www.up.edu.ph/features.php?i=94), and Engineer Alberto Laurito, assistant to the rector of the University of Santo Tomas (http://www.varsitarian.net/news/times_higher_education_survey_erroneous).
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Times Higher Education self-introduction:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/
This year’s full list:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html
About Author
No PH university has made it again to the top 400 this year, 2012.