- National University of Singapore, NUS, and Nanyang Technological University, NTU, also in Singapore, top the U.S. News Global Asian rankings for the first time
- University of Tokyo continues its run as top in Asia in National Taiwan University (NTU) Ranking
- Tsinghua is number one in Engineering and Computer Science in U.S. News and NTU
- NTU is number one in Computer Science in NTU followed by Tsinghua
(25 October 2017) This News Flash is a brief overview of October 2017 updates that include world and subject rankings from U.S News & World Report and NTU. They both use Clarivate Analytics data and emphasize bibliometrics. See Table 1. October News Flash 2017 for similarities and differences.
These should be the last of the 2017 global releases, although some are labeled 2017 and some 2018. Also in October, QS issued its regional rankings. The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education rolled out their second U.S. College Rankings and THE also updated some subject rankings and added a few new subjects.
U.S. News Best Global Universities
The 2018 rankings include 1,250 schools from 74 countries. This is up from 1,000 in 2017. Inclusion is based on reputation rankings and scholarly output. Over 400 are from Asia. Five East Asian universities are in the top 100, including two from Singapore, leading the pack for the first time, two from China and one from Japan. The regional rankings use the same metrics and rank order as the world rankings. China has 29 universities in the top 500, Japan has 13 and South Korea eight. Five of six ranked Hong Kong universities are in the top 250.
25 percent of the rankings are from global and regional reputation surveys. 45 percent are size dependent bibliometrics and 30 percent are size independent, using output and citations from Clarivate Analytics.
NTU Ranking – The Performance Rankings of Scientific Papers
Bibliometrics comprise 100 percent of the NTU Ranking. They include 11 year and current year output and citation data extracted from Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index. 80 percent of the metrics are size dependent, based on numbers of papers or citations. The difference in weightings of similar data used by NTU and U.S. News explains the difference in rankings for Princeton and Cal Tech in Table 1.
The number of institutions in the October 2017 release increased from 500 to 800. 11 Asian universities are in the top 100 with six from China, two each from Singapore and Hong Kong and one from Korea. China has 45 in the top 500; Japan has 15 and South Korea has 13. Five of the six Hong Kong Universities are in the top 300. The regional rankings are extrapolated from the global rankings.
QS uses different methodologies for each region. (Figures in parentheses are the number of universities in that region).
Asia (400): NTU-SG (Nanyang Technological University) took over the top spot from NUS (National University of Singapore) which is not surprising since it took the top Asian spot in the world rankings as well. Hong Kong has the most universities in the top 10 with four. China has three, one more than the previous ranking and South Korea has one. West Asian universities are included in the Middle East
Arab Region (100): American University of Beirut takes the top spot away from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals; and Saudi Arabia still leads the region with three in the top ten. Also represented in the top ten is the UAE with two and one each from Egypt, Jordan, Oman and Qatar.
Emerging Europe and Central Asia (306): Lomonosov is number one in the region. Also in the top ten are two other Russian universities, two each from Turkey and the Czech Republic and one each from Estonia, Poland, and Kazakhstan. 25 percent of the universities in this region are from Russia.
Latin America (385): Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile is number one in the region, jumping over two Brazilian universities who were one and two in 2017. It is joined by another Chilean university, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) Brazil leads overall with four universities in the top 10 with two from Mexico and one each from Columbia and Argentina.
Times Higher Education
THE is rolling out updates to its subjects, adding new subjects such as Law and Education and adding universities to existing rankings. However only those universities already in the world rankings are in the subject rankings. Weightings vary among the subjects. Citations account for 30 percent of overall rankings and range from 15 percent for Arts & Humanities up to 35 percent for physical and life sciences, psychology and for the clinical, pre-clinical and health. rankings. Reputation makes up 33 percent of the overall rankings and 55.3 percent for Arts & Humanities.
THE also issued a new Wall Street Journal/ Times Higher Education College Rankings (US). The number of ranked colleges decreased from 1,061 to 1,056. The top ten remain the same but the order has changed. Harvard jumped from sixth to first. See Ruth’s Rankings 26 for the 2017 rankings.
METHODOLOGY:
U.S. News Global: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/articles/methodology
NTU Ranking: http://nturanking.lis.ntu.edu.tw/BackgroundMethodology/Methodology-enus.aspx
QS Regional Methodology: Check each region for separate metrics and weightings https://www.topuniversities.com/regional-rankings
Times Higher Education Subject methodology (see pg. 15 for subject weightings)https://www.timeshighereducation.com/sites/default/files/2018-wur-methodology-pwc.pdf
WSJ/THE U.S. Colleges methodology: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/wall-street-journaltimes-higher-education-college-rankings-2018-methodology
A list of Ruth’s Rankings and News Updates is here.
Ruth’s Rankings News Flash! is written by Ruth A. Pagell, emeritus faculty librarian at Emory University. After working at Emory she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University and then adjunct faculty [teaching] in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. She has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of librarianship, including contributing articles to ACCESS – orcid.org/0000-0003-3238-9674.
