HE News Brief 9.7.12
- MALAYSIA: Positioning itself as a major international hub
- SOUTH KOREA: Opposition party contemplates SNU
- TAIWAN: Professor calls for reforms
- UK: HESA publishes employability stats
QS University Rankings by Subject 2012: top universities to study arts and humanities
The arts and humanities rankings cover English language and literature, geography, history, linguistics and philosophy. One of the most interesting things that the QS University Rankings by Subject 2012: Arts and Humanities reveal is a concentration of strength in certain regions of the world in certain disciplines. Continue Reading
Diverse subject rankings show the strength of global competition
This year’s QS World University Rankings by Subject cover a record 29 disciplines, and the headline figure tells a familiar story.
MIT and Harvard underline their place at the forefront of global academia in a range of fields, topping the tables in 11 disciplines apiece, with fellow US institution Stanford University taking 3 top spots.
The remaining number-one positions are occupied by the UK’s leading universities, Oxford (top in geography, history and philosophy) and Cambridge (English language and literature).
However, while the leading institutions from the US and UK underline their consistency across the spectrum of academic endeavor, these rankings are notable above all, for the number of world-class departments they reveal at institutions less accustomed to the upper echelons of global rankings.
HE News Brief 2.7.12
- UK: A new report discusses social mobility and higher education
- UK: Allegations that universities offer places to poor performing foreign students
- INTERNATIONAL: India and Chinese international student trends
- RUSSIA: Recognition of foreign universities in ranking systems
HE News Brief 11.6.12
- UK: A new report about the merits of a degree
- UK: Will elite institutions go rogue and charge more in the future
- VIETNAM: Crack down on fradulant colleges
- CHILE: Call for admission system reform
Japan feels the pressure of increased competition
Japan’s economy has been surpassed in size by that of China and more recently, by some reports, that of India too. But there are only 127 million Japanese people to share that wealth, while India and China have populations of over a billion. So Japan remains much the most financially comfortable nation in Asia.
This dominance has been established since the 19th century and is reflected in Japanese representation in the 2012 QS University Rankings: Asia. We rank 300 universities, and 73 of them are in Japan.
This happens to be exactly one ahead of China. Korea has 55 of the 300, and no other nation comes near. Japan has seven of the top 20 universities, three more than Hong Kong and four more that China or Korea.
In addition, some Japanese institutions are improving their rankings by comparison with their Asian competitors. Examples include Tokyo Medical and Dental University, up 22 places to 61.
However, the overall impression given by these rankings is that Japan is feeling the pressure exerted by the growing Asian focus on higher education.
This is certainly apparent from the top of the table. Tokyo University, which would have been regarded as Asia’s top institution for most of the 20th century, fell from 4th in this ranking in 2011 to 8th here, two places ahead of its rival Kyoto. Kyoto is down three places, Osaka has fallen from 8 to 11, Tokyo Institute of Technology from 9 to 13, Tohoku from ninth equal to 14, and Nagoya from 14 to 18.
The reasons for Japan’s decline in these rankings are not hard to find. Indeed, they are already the subject of agonised debate within Japan itself.
They are exemplified in the results for Tokyo University. Academics and employers both regard Tokyo as a leading Asian university, giving it a 100 score in our surveys of both groups. In addition, it has an impressive faculty/student ratio, scoring 98.4 on this measure. Its faculty are productive when it comes to research, scoring 97.8 for papers per faculty member and 98.7 for the frequency with which these papers are cited.
On paper production, Tokyo beats every university above it in the ranking by a big margin, with the sole exception of KAIST.
However, Japanese superiority is far less in evidence when it comes to our measures of international achievement. Only 4.5 per cent of Tokyo’s academic staff and 8.3 per cent of its students are from outside Japan. Kyoto has even fewer foreign students and slightly more overseas staff.
By contrast, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, top in these rankings, has a 50 per cent international faculty and gets 36.9 per cent of it students from outside of Hong Kong. Tokyo would come much higher in these rankings if it got close to matching this achievement.
The same pattern is repeated in our two final measures, university performance in attracting and sending international exchange students. Again, Tokyo and Kyoto emerge as places where international students do not want to go, and whose students would rather stay at home.
Even so, the picture is not completely gloomy. While Keio, one of the big private universities of the Tokyo region, has 5.7 per cent international staff and 3.0 per cent international students, its direct rival Waseda manages 11.5 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.
Warning sign
Japanese observers agree that these statistics are a warning sign that should not be ignored. They are struck by the rise in prestige of Chinese universities, and also by the growing status of institutions in Hong Kong and Singapore, small territories with the advantage of widespread English.
In addition, Japan’s international reputation as one of the world’s most innovative economies has been damaged by technological success in Taiwan and Korea, typified by the emergence of HTC and Samsung as powerful competitors for Sony and its ilk.
Japanese universities have accepted that their nation’s unique language, however beguiling, is part of the problem, and are using more English and Chinese in their teaching. This trend will grow. However, students living in Japan will still have to learn enough Japanese for everyday life.
More of an issue is the cost of living in Japan. While the gap between Japanese prices and those in Europe and North America has narrowed, Japan remains an expensive option by Asian standards. The Ministry of Education is looking for ways to bring more international students to Japan, and accepts that this will cost money.
Indeed, there may soon be new reasons for ambitious international students to come to Japan. The March 2011 earthquake did immense damage, but has had the unintended effect of asking uncomfortable questions about Japanese society.
The decision to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster suggests that Japan’s universities will have to pay more attention to new forms of energy supply.
More fundamentally, there may well be pressure for the top universities to educate the senior managers and politicians of the future in new ways, after the perceived failings of civil servants, ministers and the bureaucrats of the Tokyo Electric Power Company. This may mean new and innovative approaches to teaching.
It remains to be seen whether Japan can succeed in this feat of national reorientation. Its effective and high-quality university system is one reason to think it can, especially its base in well-regarded research.
In addition, future social change in Japan may well make its universities more attractive to foreign students and staff. Japanese society is aging fast and needs to import more skilled people.
More generally, globally mobile students often want to work in the country where they study after they graduate. This is a problem in Japan because of the conservative attitude of major employers to foreigners.
It will be a long time before Japan is as welcoming to foreign graduates of its own universities as the US or Europe are to those of theirs. But an improvement in employer attitudes would increase the attractiveness of Japanese universities.
The rise of Asia’s young universities
Youth is on the march in Asia. Not only are four of the continent’s top ten universities less than 50 years old, but they are also among the leading institutions in the world for their age.
Asian universities fill four of the top five places in a new table of young universities extracted from the 2011/12 QS World University Rankings to demonstrate their growing power. The more recent figures included in the specialist Asian rankings published today suggest that they will make an even bigger mark this year.
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), which is top in Asia for the second year in a row, is the youngest of all, having been founded only in 1991. The neighbouring Chinese University of Hong Kong, which finishes ahead of HKUST on the different criteria used in the world rankings, is also less than 50 years old.
The ‘50 under 50’ global comparison of young universities shows that HKUST, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nanyang Technological University and KAIST (the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) are not just eminent in their own continent. They are among the top five universities in the world founded since 1962 and in the top 100 of any age.
- View the full QS University Rankings: Asia >
Seven of the top ten universities in the ‘Under 50’ ranking are in Asia – POSTECH (the Pohang University of Science and Technology) and City University of Hong Kong making up the other high-fliers. Nearly all of them have been on an upward trajectory in the QS World University Rankings.
Other successes in the global comparison of youthful universities include Tsukuba University in Japan, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and the National Yang Ming University, in China. Many others can be expected to join the ranking in future years, as recent investments begin to produce measurable results.
The ability of so many universities to challenge the global elite so early in their existence is a credit to their academics, but it also demonstrates Asian governments’ belief in the power of higher education and their willingness to commit the necessary resources from their booming economies. China’s recent investment in its universities is by far the biggest in the world, and other countries have also spent freely.
In South Korea, for example, 2.6 per cent of GDP was spent on higher education in 2008, according to Unesco. This compares with 1.6 per cent in Australia, 1.5 per cent in New Zealand and 1.4 per cent in Japan.
- View the full QS Top 50 under 50 >
A number of Asian governments have targeted investment in their leading universities to make them competitive internationally. China’s C9 universities and Japan’s Global 30 program are perhaps the best known of these, but Korea, Malaysia and Thailand all have selective funding programmes to internationalize their top universities and improve their performance in regional and global rankings.
Governmental interest in higher education has been shown through policy developments, as well as pure spending. In Hong Kong, for example, the government has overseen a top-to-bottom reform of the education system, switching from three to four-year degrees in the already successful universities. It is also offering an extensive site for a branch campus of a leading overseas university to educate more of its citizens to a high level.
A recent World Bank report on South Asian countries noted that spending on universities, both public and private, had increased in much of the region. While this growth did not lead to a corresponding increase in student enrolments, the ‘density’ of top-tier universities had increased. The Bank expects this trend to continue.
“Since the majority of countries that are home to top tier universities are either members of the OECD, are approaching the HIC (high income county) status, or are at the high end of the upper middle income cluster, this result reflects the fact that having reached the threshold of mass tertiary education, governments can afford to prioritize investments on quality,” the report’s authors concluded. “And investments pay off, as shown by their consistent and positive association with measures of quality.”
QS University Rankings: Asia – Battle of the Big 3
The QS University Rankings – Asia (Results | Methodology) were launched yesterday and have been widely viewed across the region and the world. Hong Kong University of Science & Technology and National University of Singapore take the top two spots but there are three large systems that each have a high number of well placed institutions in the table: Japan, Korea and China.
Studying the rankings trends of these three systems seems to show that Japan remains the leading system in the region but that its lead position is being rapidly eroded while those of China and Korea are in the ascendancy.
HE News Brief 14.5.12
- UK: A case for international students
- GLOBAL: A new Rankings system measures national strength
- GLOBAL: Yale and NUS partnership raises concerns
HE News Brief 16.4.12
- India: Five-year plan calls for a significant increase in student numbers
- Canada: Business schools paving the way for internationalisation
- Australia: Paper discusses whether Australian institutions are preparing Chinese students for domestic employability
- Italy: Controversial move causing an uproar
-
Recent articles
