UP, DLSU among best universities in Asia-Pacific

MANILA, Philippines — The University of the Philippines and De La Salle University were included in this year’s list of best universities in the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the latest rankings released by London-based Times Higher Education (THE), UP continued its rise in the annual list, jumping from the 151st to 160th bracket last year to the top 101 to 110 in the region this year. It ranked 201+ in 2017.

De La Salle, meanwhile, entered the regional list for the first time, placing 201st to 250th.

Cynthia Bautista, UP vice president for academic affairs, attributed the university’s rise in its high score on citations, one of the performance indicators for the rankings.

The Asia-Pacific university rankings analyzed universities across East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania. The overall ranking features 320 universities from 13 nations.

It is based on 13 performance indicators grouped into five areas: teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), industry income (knowledge transfer) and international outlook (staff, students and research).

According to THE, Japan is the most represented nation with 103 universities featured, followed by China with 72 universities. 

Other countries with a strong presence in the ranking are Australia with 35 universities, Taiwan with 32, South Korea with 29 and Thailand with 14.

China’s Tsinghua University topped the list, followed by the National University of Singapore (NUS), University of Melbourne in Australia, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Hong Kong.

Completing the top 10 are Peking University in China, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, the Australian National University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo in Japan.

Among tertiary institutions in Southeast Asia, only the NUS, NTU and the University of Malaya in Malaysia (55th) ranked higher than UP, which overtook Thailand’s Mahindol University (111th to 120th).