Tech-focused universities in Australia and Asia dominate the latest 50 Under 50 ranking (the world’s best universities that are less than 50 years old).
The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore retains the top spot for a third year, followed by five institutions in Hong Kong and South Korea, meaning that Asian universities take the top six places.
Half of the top 10 spots go to science and technology institutes, including the University of Technology in Sydney, which rises eight places and entered top 200 of the QS world rankings for the first time this year.
Ben Sowter is head of research at QS – the higher education thinktank that compiles the rankings – and says the prominence of tech-focued institutions is significant.
“This trend suggests that young universities with the resources and willingness to focus on creating and maintaining strong Stem-based research programs stand the best chance of disrupting any established global elite,” he explains.
Maastrict University in the Netherlands is the strongest-performing European institution, at seventh place. Australia appears most frequently, with 10 of its young universities in the top 50, followed by Spain which has five, then Malaysia and Hong Kong, which both have four.
The University of Dundee and the University of Stirling are the only two British universities on the list, ranked at 15 and 47 respectively. But some of the UK’s “plate-glass” universities that were founded in 1966 have now dropped out of the ranking because they are more than 50 years old. For example, the University of Bath came seventh last year but no longer features.
The performance of each university is judged across a range of factors using the same methodology that is used in the QS World Rankings: academic reputation, employer reputation, student-faculty ratio, citations per faculty and international faculty ratio.
The table below shows this year’s top 50 and how they compare with last year. It also details the world university ranking (WUR) of each institution in 2016 and 2015.
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