
AsianScientist (Oct. 18, 2017) – Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has been ranked Asia’s top university in this year’s Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Asia University Rankings.
NTU propelled to the top spot, having improved its scores for papers per faculty and student-faculty ratio. For the second consecutive year, NTU is also the region’s best performer for citations per paper, which measures the impact and quality of the scientific work done by universities.
“NTU has made fantastic progress, having risen from No. 14 when the QS Asian rankings began in 2009. The latest rankings are an outstanding achievement and strong endorsement of NTU’s excellent reputation built up over the years, and I wish to thank the entire NTU community for their contributions,” said Professor Bertil Anderson, NTU President.
“Many Asian universities are receiving generous financial support from their governments in the form of policies, plans and programmes, such as Singapore’s Research Innovation Enterprise 2020 Plan, Brain Korea 21, and China’s Double First Class University Plan to create world-class universities by 2050. These initiatives help boost the universities’ capabilities to better compete internationally for the best brains, resources and investments.”
“The future challenge for Asia is to create high-quality teaching and research programs, and win-win partnerships across the region and beyond. If Asian universities maintain their momentum, they can potentially become the world’s leading dynamos for learning, knowledge generation and innovation by 2050.”
Unlike QS’ main World University Rankings, the QS Asian ranking measures the proportion of inbound and outbound exchange students to gain additional insights into the internationalization activity at universities in the region. Compared to QS’ World University Rankings, the QS Asian ranking also has an additional bibliometric measure of research papers per faculty, as well as the number of citations per paper to reflect the different priorities of the region’s higher education systems.
This gives NTU a competitive advantage, as it is already a talent magnet and home to some of the world’s best professors, students and up-and-coming researchers.
“For example, NTU’s young and up-and-coming scientists make up 8 percent of tenured faculty in NTU, but they account for 40 percent of NTU’s high impact publications. They represent our future and our potential,” Andersson said.
This year, QS has also adjusted its ranking methodology by retaining a five-year (2011-2015) publication period for research papers, while extending the citation period for those papers to six years (2011-2016). This increases the significance of the final year of the five-year period and provides more data to QS’ normalization process.
QS has also given equal weightage to the reputation scores by international employers and domestic employers (i.e. 50:50), compared to 70 percent for international employers versus 30 percent for domestic employers previously, given that domestic employers typically have a more intimate understanding of their local universities.
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Source: Nanyang Technological University.
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