8 PH Universities Have Just Been Named Among Asia’s Best

Eight schools in the Philippines have made it to the list of top 350 Asian universities released by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), an education and career information firm based in London, UK.

The QS University Rankings: Asia 2016, an annual ranking of the 350 top universities in Asia, sees the University of the Philippines taking the 70th spot in the region, the highest ranking attained by a Philippine university for the school year 2015-2016.

It is followed by Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, and University of Santo Tomas, respectively.

Meanwhile, three schools in Visayas and Mindanao have debuted on the list. Siliman University in Dumaguete, Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan in Cagayan De Oro, and University of San Carlos in Cebu have bested more than 4,000 universities across Asia.

The table below shows the complete list of the top 8 universities in the Philippines, and how each one fared in different criteria:

Top Universities in the Philippines 2016

University Asian ranking (2016) Asian ranking (2015) Overall score Academic reputation ranking Employer reputation ranking Arts and Humanities ranking Social Science and Management ranking
University of the Philippines 70 70 58.4 48 34 272 234
Ateneo de Manila University 99 114 47.8 74 46 309 365
De La Salle University 143 181 38.6 93 50 n/a 370
University of Santo Tomas 157 143 36.8 119 67 n/a n/a
Ateneo de Davao University 251-300 bracket 251 n/a 201+ 37.9 58 n/a
Siliman University, Dumaguete 251-300 bracket n/a  n/a
Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, Cagayan De Oro 251-300 bracket n/a
University of San Carlos, Cebu 301-350 bracket n/a

First released in 2009, QS University Rankings gauges schools according to a set of criteria put together with the help of experts and stakeholders all across the world. QS specifies the following indicators they used to gather the data:

• Academic reputation within the international community (30%)

• Employer reputation, or the perceived quality of the school’s graduates among employers (20%)

• Faculty-student ratio (15%), or the ratio of full-time academic staff per enrolled student

• Staff with a PhD (5%), a newly introduced indicator that assesses the qualification of the university’s faculty

• Proportion of international faculty (2.5%) and proportion of international students (2.5%)

• Proportion of inbound exchange students (2.5%) and proportion of outbound exchange students (2.5%)

• Citations per paper (10%), or the impact of each institution’s research among the community, which measures the internationalization activities of a university

• Papers per faculty (10%), or the number of research papers published by each member of the school’s academe.

Meanwhile, here are the 10 Asian universities that topped the list and their corresponding scores:

Top 10 Universities in Asia

University Asian ranking Score
National University of Singapore 1 100
University of Hong Kong 2 98.5
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 3 98.4
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 4 98.0
Tsinghua University 5 97.1
KAIST – Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology 6 96.9
City University of Hong Kong 7 96.4
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) 8 96.0
Peking University 9 95.6
Seoul National University 10 95.2

What do you think of these rankings? Share your thoughts in the comments below.