Commentary

Reflections On The 2006 Global University Rankings by Times of London

Da Hsuan Feng
Vice President for Research & Economic Develop

The 2006 global universities ranking by Times of London was released on October 6, 2006.

Of the top 10 universities, 7 "usual suspects" are from East and West coasts of United States. The other 3 are all from United Kingdom: Cambridge University, Oxford University and Imperial College.

Only 1 Texas university, UT Austin, is in the top 50, although its position has dropped from 26 in 2005 to 32 in 2006. Rice increases its ranking significantly from 150 in 2005 to 102 in 2006 while Texas A&M University drops from 125 in 2005 to 150 in 2006.

It should be mentioned that no universities from Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas are in the top 200. However, Vanderbilt University, the only university ranked in Tennessee made the spectacular jump from 114 in 2005 to 53 in 2006.

Latin America made no significant gains in the 2006 ranking from the 2005 ranking, although Universidad Nacional de Mexico (UNAM) improves its position in the top 200 from 95 in 2005 to 74 in 2006.

Asian universities continue to have strong showings in this ranking system. Peking University, National University of Singapore and University of Tokyo are all ranked in the top 20.

Three interesting (success) case studies according to this ranking are Hong Kong, Singapore and Israel. These three regions have quite a bit in common. First, all three have small populations: six million, four million and four million for Hong Kong, Singapore and Israel, respectively. Second, all have small number of universities (six, three, and six respectively). Third, all have significant strengths in the English language. This means that for every million people, there is approximately one university. In this ranking, three (HKU, CUHK and HKUST) of Hong Kong universities are in the top 100, and one (CITYU) in the top 200. For Singapore, one (NUS) is in the top 20 and another (NTU) in the top 100. For Israel, three are in the top 200 but none in the top 100.

Comparisons between HK and Singapore with Taiwan, Korea and Australia are interesting. In this ranking, Taiwan has only ine (NTU) showing up in the top 200, Korea has one (SNU) in the top 100 and two (Korea University and KAIST) in the top 200 and Australia has 12 universities in the top 200. However, half of the 12 in Australia are in the top 50! Note that Taiwan with 23 million people has approximately 160 universities and Korea with 48 million people has approximately 120 universities. So for Taiwan, for every million people, there are 6 universities and for Korea, for every million people, there are about 2.5 universities. I have no data on the number of universities in Australia. However, my guess is that it is no more than 50, and so with a population of 20 million, the upper bound is that for every million people, there are 2.5 universities.

If the Times of London ranking has any significance at all, then the showings of Taiwan and Korea are probably "wake up calls." It may be just sheer coincidence, but the recent announcement of pumping significant amount of resources to higher education in Taiwan, the so-called "Five Years with 50 Billion" program (50 Billions refer to New Taiwan Dollars, which is approximately $1 US ~ NTD 30!), is I am sure a welcome action to address the issue in Taiwan.

Since China Mainland and India populations are over 1 billion, and since I do not believe that the problem of scaling from tens of million of population to over 1 billion is linear, comparison between China and India and the rest of Asia Pacific is like comparing apples and oranges. Still, it is interesting to note that only 6 of the 3000 universities in China made it in the top 200, although it is worth noting that Peking University is in the top 20 and Tsing Hua University jumped from 68 in 2005 to 28 in 2006!

I do not know the number of universities in India, but I am sure it is a large number. Still, there are only three Indian universities listed in the top 200: Indian Institute of Technology (57) and Indian Institute of Management (68) and Jarwaharlal Nehru University (183). The only uncertainty here is that both IIT and IIM have many campuses (IIT has 7) and the ranking did not say whether it is specifically on one campus or a collective ranking.

No ranking should be used in "isolation" just as a single telescope cannot measure distance. Please consult the other prominent global ranking system carried out by Shanghai Jiaotong University which was released on August 15, 2006. You will find some discrepancies.

For a complete list of the Times of London ranking, email Beth Keithly

Top Ten Universities in the World

	2005 rank	2006 rank
Harvard University	1	1
Cambridge University	3	2
Oxford University	2	3
MIT	2	4
Yale University	7	4
Stanford University	5	6
Caltech	8	7
University of California Berkeley	6	8
Imperial College	13	9
Princeton University	9	10

Texas Universities

	2005 rank	2006 rank
The University of Texas at Austin	26	32
Rice University	150	102
Texas A and M University	125	150

California Universities

	2005 rank	2006 rank
Stanford University	5	6
Caltech	8	7
University of California Berkeley	6	8
University of California Los Angeles	37	31
University of California San Diego	42	44
University of Southern California	124	101
University of California Santa Barbara	159	141
University of California Davis	206	170
University of California Irvine	254	198

Best Universities in China Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Japan

	2005 rank	2006 rank
Beijing (Peking) University	15	14
National University of Singapore	22	19
Hong Kong University	41	33
National Taiwan University	114	108
Seoul National University	93	63
Tokyo University	16	19

Two Case Studies: Hong Kong and Singapore

	2005 rank	2006 rank
Hong Kong University	41	33
Chinese University of Hong Kong	51	50
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	43	58
City University of Hong Kong	178	154
National University of Singapore	22	19
Nanyang Technological University	41	68