Asian Universities Push Forward In World Rankings

Asian universities have shown an improvement in their overall rank in the latest QS World University Rankings of life sciences.

AsianScientist (May 10, 2011) – Asian universities have shown strong improvement in the latest 2010/2011 QS World University Rankings of medicine, psychology, and biological sciences.

Although QS has published world university rankings since 2004, this is the first time it has published specific rankings for the life sciences.

Familiar names like Harvard University, MIT, Oxford University and Cambridge University have achieved top 10 positions in these three areas. But despite the success of U.K. and U.S. universities in the life sciences, smaller nations have started to regard biomedical research as a national priority, and 31 countries have at least one university in the top 200 for these three subject areas.

High flyers include the University of Melbourne which is ranked #15 in medicine, followed by the National University of Singapore at #18. In the biological sciences, the University of Tokyo ranked at #15.

Notably, the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, have not been placed strongly on these lists. With an increased emphasis in science and technology over the past decade, both these developing nations have the potential to improve on their rankings over the next few years.

The QS World University Rankings of the world’s top 500 universities is published annually since 2004 by Quacquarelli Symonds.

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Source: QS Top University Rankings.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Steven Mo is a Rhodes Scholar and a Ph.D. student at Oxford University, studying biomedical engineering. Steven graduated with a S.B. in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in USA. His graduate research focuses on cavitation-enhanced viral therapy to solid tumors by integrating sonosensitive nanoparticles and high intensity focused ultrasound.

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