Climbing from the earlier lower rank, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and National University of Singapore (NUS) have leaped to grab places among top 15 in the London based education consultancy Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) annual World University Rankings released on September 15, 2015. While NTU has jumped to the 13th position from the earlier 39, NUS has grabbed 12th place going up from the earlier 22nd. Many earlier top ranked Universities and institutions like King’s College; Cornell University, Hopkins and Yale University are now placed in the lower ranking positions below NUS and NTU Singapore.
The Management (MBA & other courses), Engineering and Technology, Natural Sciences and Social Science faculty areas at NUS Singapore were ranked among the global top 10. NUS was ranked 9th globally in the Academic and Employers Reputation criteria.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been ranked at the first place while Harvard holds the second ranking. A unique feature is that the Stanford University and University of Cambridge have shared the 3rd position in QS Ranking. The University of Cambridge was earlier ranked 2nd but has gone down by one rank, whereas Stanford University has leapt to 3rd position from 7th.
NUS and NTU Singapore have also left behind the Ivy League schools including University of Pennsylvania and Yale University as they have gone down to 18th and 15th places from their earlier 13th and 10th places respectively.
Maintaining the top 2 positions in Asia, NUS and NTU Singapore have been placed at 1st and 2nd positions as Asia’s top universities. Cheering the leap in ranking position NUS President, Professor Tan Chorh Chuan and NTU President, Professor Bertil Andersson were of the view that it was the result of consistent performance, quality education and focus on talent. According to Prof Bertil Singaporeans can be proud of having 2 Universities of international repute.
QS has ranked 891 institutions this year after conducting survey of 76,700 academics and 44,200 employers. 3,500+ institutions were considered for ranking.
QS modifies Ranking methodology
Releasing the Ranking QS shared that this year’s rankings adopted a modified methodology in measuring research impact for “fairer evaluations for universities with a strong profile in areas with lower research activity, such as arts, humanities and social sciences”.
Correcting certain biases and plugging the loop holes QS has changed the process of taking into account the Research Citations as it was more inclined towards medical sciences than keeping a balance with Engineering and management areas as the citations are typically lower in these areas than that in Medicine. This is because of the nature of research in these fields. Now ‘by adopting normalised citation, it levels the playing field for all universities as it averages the citations in each field’ commented NTU President, Professor Bertil Andersson.
While Medical sciences account for 49% in citations, the arts and humanities produce only 1 per cent of citations, because of their very different publishing culture. Now with the change, equal weightage of 20% has been there in research citation in all the 5 areas comprising life sciences and medicine, arts and humanities, engineering and technology, social sciences and management, and natural sciences. According to QS head of research Ben Sowter the new methodology now evens the playing field.
However Sowter is of the view “If QS had continued with the previous approach, NTU would still have gained more than 10 places from last year, underlining its genuine transformation into a world- class university over the past decade".
Apart from significant improvement in research citation, NTU has also been doing well in terms of academic reputation and faculty-student ratio that made it climb the ranking position up.
Top 20 Universities in QS ranking
| Name of the University/College |
Awarded ranking position # |
Earlier ranking position |
|
Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
1 |
1 |
|
Harvard University |
2 |
4 |
|
University of Cambridge |
3 |
2 |
|
Stanford University |
3 |
7 |
|
California institute of Technology |
5 |
8 |
|
University of Oxford |
6 |
5 |
|
University college London |
7 |
5 |
|
Imperial College London |
8 |
2 |
|
Swiss Federal institute of Technology |
9 |
12 |
|
University of Chicago |
10 |
11 |
|
Princeton University |
11 |
9 |
|
National University of Singapore (NUS) |
12 |
22 |
|
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore |
13 |
39 |
|
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne |
14 |
17 |
|
Yale University |
15 |
10 |
|
Johns Hopkins University |
16 |
14 |
|
Cornell University |
17 |
19 |
|
University of Pennsylvania |
18 |
13 |
|
Australian National University |
19 |
25 |
|
King’s College London |
19 |
16 |
QS ranking is one of the most respected in the global ranking and despite all the modifications in ranking methodology that pushed the earlier top ranked Universities to lower ranking positions, the perception is that these universities would be trying to come to score high on other parameters instead of relying only on research citations. The ranking has been appreciated by all the participating universities across the world.
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