Five New Scholarships Awarded to South African Students
Five students at South African universities have become the latest to benefit from the QS Scholarships Scheme, which is now ten years old.
The latest scholarships were awarded at the QS Maple conference, in Johannesburg, in the presence of more than 200 university leaders and academics from Africa, the Middle East and beyond. The recipients were selected on the basis of academic excellence and social engagement.
The five students will share $6,000 in scholarships to ensure that they can complete their courses. Bongekile Thembelihle Mncwabe Gundo is taking a degree in pharmacy and Gloria Thathalsa is training to be a doctor at the University of KwaZulu Natal, while Elana Smit is studying marketing management and Samantha Senosha is taking a BA in Community Development and Leadership at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Jean-Jacques Monga KabokoJean, the only postgraduate, has embarked on a PhD in Engineering at UJ.
QS is believed to be the only ranking organization to have established a charitable foundation of this sort. Nunzio Quacquarelli, its founder and chief executive, said: ”QS Scholarship winners are united by demonstration of responsible leadership and community commitment, in very varied circumstances. QS is proud to give something back through its scholarship scheme and to help such outstanding young people.”
The QS Education Trust was established in 2003 and now has a scholarship fund worth over $1.2 million donated by the company and partner institutions. All delegate fees from QS Apple and QS Mapple conferences contribute to the scholarships scheme.
Over the past 10 years, more than 100 individuals from all over the world have benefited from funds donated by QS to support the IR studies at institutions that include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Columbia, Stanford, Cambridge, Luigi Bocconi University and University of Navarra. All have been selected by universities and business schools participating in the QS Scholarships Scheme.
Unstoppable Rise of Young Universities
A new leader emerged in the QS ranking of universities that are less than 50 years old. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), one of the youngest institutions of all, takes the accolade after moving up from third position last year’s inaugural ranking.
HKUST was already the leader in the QS Asian University Ranking, also published last week. Established only in 1991, it has shown its quality against much older institutions, rising seven places to 33rd in the overall global ranking for 2012.
The latest “Top 50 Under 50” ranking sees one Hong Kong university replace another at its head. Last year’s leader, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is now too old to qualify, having reached its half-century along with four others from the 2012 top 50. The universities of York, East Anglia and Victoria, and King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals are in the same position.
However, HKUST has overtaken the University of Warwick to reach the top. It is one of three universities from Hong Kong in the top ten.
Second-placed Nanyang Technological University is of the same vintage as HKUST, although another university had occupied the same site previously. The Singaporean institution has moved up from fourth place, having also entered the top 50 in the 2012 QS World University Rankings.
Partly because of the loss of the five 50-year-olds, 29 of the universities in the new ranking have moved up since last year. However, the progress made by these young institutions is genuine: those in the Under 50 ranking have, on average, risen 2.7 places in the global ranking in the last 12 months.
All 50 institutions in the new table fall within the top 350 in the QS World University Ranking, despite the advantages enjoyed by historic universities in such comparisons. The Hong Kong Baptist University, 27th this year, is the youngest at less than 20 years old.
By far the highest new entrant is the Hong Polytechnic University, in ninth place. It was omitted from last year’s inaugural ranking as an institution that was more than 50 years old, but it has since been accepted that university status arrived only in 1994. The University of Wollongong, in Australia, is in a similar position, having been omitted last year because it had been a division of the University of New South Wales until becoming a university in its own right in 1975.
The two cases illustrate the difficulty inherent in deciding whether universities that have evolved from other institutions should be considered less than 50 years old. The criteria employed in this ranking omit merged universities in which the dominant partner is more than 50 years old, but include those that were colleges before being granted university status.
The other new entrants are Argentina’s Universidad Austral, a private university based in Buenos Aires; Brunel University, in London; King Abdul Aziz University, in Jeddah; Universitá degli Studi di Roma – Tor Vergata; Linköping University, in Sweden; and Germany’s Universität Bremen. All have been moving up the overall world rankings, Linköping by more than 50 places in 2012.
The QS University Rankings: Asia 2013
The fifth edition of the QS University Rankings: Asia appeared last week.
It shows that for the third year in a row, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is the region’s top institution. But there are also some surprises in the rankings, both among the top dogs and a little lower down.
A casual look at these rankings confirms the advantages that the English language, and historic links to the English-speaking world more generally, bring to some Asian universities. The top three institutions are in Hong Kong and Singapore, repeating last year’s findings. These three, HKUST, the National University of Singapore and the University of Hong Kong, are all well-liked in our academic and employer surveys, the backbone of the ranking.
But it would be wrong to think that these universities show up strongly in our rankings solely for historical reasons. The higher education systems of Singapore and Hong Kong reflect the open global status both countries, so much so that all three universities have perfect scores in our measures of international students and faculty, and apart from HKU also score top marks for outbound and incoming exchange students. This is a very powerful combination and makes up in our ranking for these three’s comparatively modest output of research papers.
However, it is also notable that seven of our top 20 Asian universities are in Japan, starting with Tokyo and Kyoto in ninth and tenth place respectively. A lot is said about Japan’s current attempts to revive economic growth after two lost decades. These findings imply that the Abe government’s idea of putting universities at the heart of this project has some good raw material to work with. However, our ranking also confirms Japan’s recognition that its universities need to be much more international. It shows that the problem is even more acute when it comes to international faculty than it is for international students.
One fact that will doubtless attract attention in Tokyo is the growing power of Korean universities in these rankings, starting with Seoul National in fourth place. KAIST and POSTECH are sixth and seventh, and each has improved its position since last year, while Yonsei and Korea University are also in the top 20. A comparison of Tokyo and SNU is revealing. It shows SNU beating Todai convincingly on all four of our measures of international orientation: overseas students, overseas faculty, and inbound and outbound exchange students.
A further intriguing question is the future of higher education in mainland China. The top Chinese university, Peking, is in fifth place here, one up from 2012. It scores well across the board, including our measures of research volume and quality. In addition, its rise is consistent with other Chinese form in this ranking. Of the 21 mainland universities in our top 100, 14 are better-placed than last year.
By contrast, this ranking holds little comfort for our Indian readers. The top Indian institution, IIT Delhi, is in 38th place and the top mainstream university, also in Delhi, is 80th. They emerge here as well-liked institutions on a national scale, scoring well with employers and academics, but have essentially no appeal to globally mobile students or faculty.
These rankings also show that good universities are widespread in the Earth’s most populous continent. Japan and China account for 71 and 75 respectively of the 300 universities we list, a clear majority. But we rank universities in 16 nations in all, including one each in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Macao and Sri Lanka
ink that these universities show up strongly in our rankings solely for historical reasons. The higher education systems of Singapore and Hong Kong reflect the open global status both countries, so much so that all three universities have perfect scores in our measures of international students and faculty, and apart from HKU also score top marks for outbound and incoming exchange students. This is a very powerful combination and makes up in our ranking for these three’s comparatively modest output of research papers.
However, it is also notable that seven of our top 20 Asian universities are in Japan, starting with Tokyo and Kyoto in ninth and tenth place respectively. A lot is said about Japan’s current attempts to revive economic growth after two lost decades. These findings imply that the Abe government’s idea of putting universities at the heart of this project has some good raw material to work with. However, our ranking also confirms Japan’s recognition that its universities need to be much more international. It shows that the problem is even more acute when it comes to international faculty than it is for international students.
One fact that will doubtless attract attention in Tokyo is the growing power of Korean universities in these rankings, starting with Seoul National in fourth place. KAIST and POSTECH are sixth and seventh, and each has improved its position since last year, while Yonsei and Korea University are also in the top 20. A comparison of Tokyo and SNU is revealing. It shows SNU beating Todai convincingly on all four of our measures of international orientation: overseas students, overseas faculty, and inbound and outbound exchange students.
A further intriguing question is the future of higher education in mainland China. The top Chinese university, Peking, is in fifth place here, one up from 2012. It scores well across the board, including our measures of research volume and quality. In addition, its rise is consistent with other Chinese form in this ranking. Of the 21 mainland universities in our top 100, 14 are better-placed than last year.
By contrast, this ranking holds little comfort for our Indian readers. The top Indian institution, IIT Delhi, is in 38th place and the top mainstream university, also in Delhi, is 80th. They emerge here as well-liked institutions on a national scale, scoring well with employers and academics, but have essentially no appeal to globally mobile students or faculty.
These rankings also show that good universities are widespread in the Earth’s most populous continent. Japan and China account for 71 and 75 respectively of the 300 universities we list, a clear majority. But we rank universities in 16 nations in all, including one each in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Macao and Sri Lanka
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