60 Asian universities land in top 400 world rankings

The University of Tokyo, University of Hong Kong, and National University of Singapore lead the group of 60 Asian universities that made it to the Top 400 in the Times World University Rankings for 2011 – 2012 . California Institute of Technology (Caltech) reigns supreme in the world ranking, unseating Harvard University, which slipped to second. Stanford University made it to third. The rankings were disclosed Thursday. Times deputy news editor John Morgan said Caltech dethroned Harvard “thanks mainly to a 16 percent rise in research funding." American universities dominated the rankings as 75 of them made it to the Top 400. The United Kingdom has 32 institutions, Germany and the Netherlands both have 12, and Canada has 9. “But when that table is adjusted for national spending on higher education, Switzerland has the most universities in the top 200 per billion dollars spent, followed by the UK in second place and the Netherlands in third. The US finishes 16th by this measure," Morgan said. Japan has 16 universities in the Top 400. China has 10, Taiwan has 8 and South Korea has 7. Israel and Turkey both have 4 universities in the list. The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay is the only university from India in the Top 400. There are no Philippine universities in the rankings. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THEWUR) were developed in tandem with data provider, Thomson Reuters, and “with expert input from more than 50 leading figures in the sector from 15 countries across every continent." “We believe we have created the gold standard in international university performance comparisons," THEWUR said. It explained that the rankings “employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer." The 13 elements were then clustered under five main 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); and - International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent). — ELR, GMA News