The World's Best New Universities
Photo: AP
For the last eight years, Times Higher Education, a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market, has put out a list of what it deems to be the world’s top universities. Each year, THE gets more ambitious in its rankings, expanding the list from 200 schools to 400 in 2011. (I wrote about the 2011 list here.)
Today THE put out a new listing, of the top 100 schools in the world that are 50 years old or younger. According to Phil Baty, THE’s rankings editor, the magazine wanted to highlight a list of newer universities with strong ratings, in order to demonstrate that the U.S. and the United Kingdom, which dominate most higher ed lists, are facing a crop of up-and-comers. “The traditional heritage universities do not have a monopoly on excellence,” says Baty. “There are new, rising stars coming to challenge them for the best students and the best academic faculty.”
Of the top 100 institutions under 50 years old, only nine are in the U.S. The U.K. has a stronger showing, with 20 schools, which is more than any other country. But Baty says that growing institutions in the Gulf states and in Asia, are presenting a challenge to the U.S. and the U.K. There are a total of 30 countries represented in the new ranking, including Canada, France, Ireland, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. For the complete list of 100 schools under 50 years old, click here.
The top ten on the list are a diverse group, led by South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology, which is just 26 years old. Baty says the school, known as Postech, has grown in part because it gets substantial financial support from POSCO, a major Korean steel company located in Pohang. POSCO’s then-CEO, the late Tae-Joon Park, founded the institution and modeled it after the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, with an emphasis on science and engineering. Since 2010, Postech has run as a bilingual institution, with most of its lectures and faculty meetings held in English. “It’s a shining example of what can be achieved by any nation with the right support,” says Baty. (In March, THEpublished an in-depth report on Postech, calling it “a university in the ascendant.”)
Unlike the U.S. News and World Report rankings, or Forbes’ own college rankings system, THE does not measure indicators like entry requirements, graduation rates, professor ratings by students or alumni salaries. Instead, it emphasizes global scholarship and reputation. THE gathers data on points like the number of times the school is cited in academic research, the impact of those citations on other research, and the volume, income and reputation of research the school produces. It also looks at the number of degrees awarded to undergraduates and to the academic staff, and teaching measures, like staff-to-student ratios and a survey of teacher reputations. (For more on THE’s ranking methods, click here.)
One way the under-50 list differs from THE‘s top universities ranking: it is calibrated to give less weight to prestige, explains Baty, making it possible for newer, lesser-known schools to rise in the rankings.
Of the 100 schools on the under-50 list, the top 19 have all made THE’s cut for the top 200 universities, establishing themselves as competitors with the world’s top schools. “This list really points out that the world is changing,” says Baty. “There are many nations ready to invest in higher education,” he adds.
Number two on the list, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, is arguably older than 50 years, since it started out as part of an institution founded by the Swiss government back in 1853. But in 1969, it split from the larger University of Lausanne and established its own campus in a suburb southwest of Lausanne in 1978. Like Postech, EPFL emphasizes science and engineering. It is still run by the Swiss government and it has its own nuclear reactor on campus, which it uses to teach reactor physics.
The third school on the list, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has a similar emphasis to the top two schools. It opened its doors in 1991, and has already built a strong reputation in science, technology and business, offering an MBA program that the Financial Times has ranked as 10th best in the world. The school runs the MBA program in partnership with the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Ill., and it has a partnership with NYU’s Stern School of Business for students who want to get a Master’s in global finance. The school ranks at no. 62 on THE’s world university rankings.
The highest-ranked U.S. school on the under-50 list comes in at number 4, theUniversity of California, Irvine, founded in 1965 to accommodate the growing number of students enrolling in the U.C. system.
THE editor Baty says the under-50 list shows how much the world of higher education is changing, with both the private and public sectors in many countries outside the U.S. and the U.K. investing in new universities. “They are waiting in the wings to steal the crown from America,” says Baty. “It’s a changing, dynamic world.”
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