The top universities in Asia

Which are the top universities in Asia? how do those compare to other universities around the world? it depends on who you ask. Having been educated in the very western-oriented university in Israel – the Hebrew University – I’ve been given the feeling that universities in Asia aren’t that good of an option. If you want proper education, then the west – being mainly about the US and the UK – is the best option to consider. When I tell friends and family in Israel that I’m considering enrolling for a PhD in a university in Asia, I usually get a shocked response hinting that they don’t understand why anybody would think of such a thing, especially when it comes to PhDs. "National University of Taiwan? did you ever hear of any western who actually studied there?", "How good can a National University of Singapore be?" or my personal favorite "I didn’t know China has universities".

Looking into the subject this past few months I’ve been quite surprised to see just how dominant Asian universities are in the world of a western-oriented academy and that they are steadily climbing the world rankings to compete with the best universities. In my search for some sort of standard to compare universities in the east to the ones in the west I resulted in using the "world top universities" lists, which have changed my perspective – but that have still left me a bit confused.

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Just a week ago Shanghai Jiao Tong university, which is obviously in China, has released their "Academic ranking of world universities" for the year 2006 . This list, like other lists, details the ranking of universities according to certain criteria, in different clusters including an Asian cluster .

We rank universities by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, articles indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution.

For each indicator, the highest scoring institution is assigned a score of 100, and other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score. The distribution of data for each indicator is examined for any significant distorting effect; standard statistical techniques are used to adjust the indicator if necessary.

Think this list isn’t used alot? do a small Google search and you’ll see it up there with the Times Supplemental list and Webometrics (which I’ll mention later). On the academic lists I’m subscribed to they take this list very seriously, mentioning their rankings in university brochures.

It’s a nice feature for me that on those lists Israel is considered to be located in Asia, so this way I can compare my own Hebrew University in Israel to the other universities I’m interested in across Asia. 

What does the 2006 list have to say about the universities in Asia? Well, unsurprisingly Japan dominates the top 10 Asian universities list, with Tokyo and Kyoto universities in the first two places (19 and 22 on world list). Hebrew University is 4th place (60). Other Asian countries? National University of Singapore is ranked 10-19 (102-150) followed by some other big Israeli universities. Taiwan makes a first appearance with National Taiwan University at 20-24 (151-200) together with the Chinese Tsing Hua University, the Korean Seoul National University and the University of Hong Kong. India only appears at 41-63 (301-400) with Indian Institute of Science.

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Another very famous list, which gives Asian universities alot more respect, is "The Times Higher Education Supplement ". This years ranking is still not updated, and the last ranking is from October 2005.

The Times gives a completely different look on the Asian universities in the world rank. It’s shocking to find China over-ranking Japan with the first place going to Beijing University (15 in world rank), and only second place given to Tokyo University (16). National University of Singapore comes in 4th (22), Hong Kong University 10th (41), Indian Institute of Technology 14th (40), the Hebrew University 20th (77), Seoul National University 26 (93), and National University of Taiwan at 33 (114).

Why are there such big difference in ranking between the two lists? I believe it’s got to do with the way they measure the rankings, since The Times relies on peer review, recruiter review, international faculty  score, international students score, faculty/student score, and citations score. It seems that Shanghai Jiao Tong’s ranking is alot more academic than the very practical The Times ranking.

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Last, is the Internet based Webometrics , last ranking being from January 2006 and should be updated in the upcoming month. Their Asian rankings are really low.

First up is the Tokyo University (87 in world rank), second is the Hebrew University (131), National University of Singapore is 3rd, National University of Taiwan 6th (190), Chinese University of Hong Kong 8th (217), Beijing University is 10th place (239), Seoul University 11th (311).

The webometrics is based on a combination of internet links and tools like Google Scholar and the other rankings maintained on the web :

The number of global rankings available for comparison purposes is very limited, so only six different sources were used for extracting the data. As absolute values are not comparable, all the figures were converted into rankings. The data providers are:

Our own Webometrics Ranking of World Universities ;

Essential Science Indicators – http://scientific.thomson.com/products/esi/; http://www.in-cites.com/; http://www.esi-topics.com/) ; Google Scholarhttp://scholar.google.com) ;

The data for popularity (number of visits) was extracted from the Alexahttp://www.alexa.com) ;

The Academic Ranking of World Universities ; The Times Higher World University Rankings 2005 database

I’m assuming the reasons for the poor Asian rating is that the web is still very western oriented academically (try finding a Taiwanese article in Google Scholar). 

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What does it all mean ? Asian universities are an option when considering where to study as some Asian universities are ranked among the top ones in the world. It was interesting to see how the big Asian universities top my Israeli alternative and that – overall – the Asian rankings are slowly getting better.