Size does matter. It might’ve taken a few years, but mainland China has finally overtaken Hong Kong atop the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), grabbing seven spots in the world’s top 200 to Hong Kong’s five.
The 14th annual edition of the THE announced on Tuesday compares the world’s top 1,000 higher education institutions in 77 different countries.
Six of Hong Kong’s eight universities were among the top 1,000, with the University of Hong Kong (HKU), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) ranked in the top 100.
HKU, the city’s No.1 university, climbed from last year’s 43rd to 40th, becoming the 4th-best university in Asia, behind National University of Singapore and two Chinese schools: Peking University and National Tsing Hua University, the mainland’s only schools to crack the top 100.
HKUST rose five places to 44th, just behind HKU. The CUHK, meanwhile, is among Asia’s biggest risers this year, jumping 18 places to 58th. The rankings report said the improvement came amid a major boost to the university’s reputation for research and teaching, as well as an increase in its scores for citations. City University, meanwhile, came in at 182nd, while Polytechnic is situated somewhere between 401 and 500, a category in which individual rankings were not identified.
Singapore’s National University of Singapore remains Asia’s top university, ranking 22nd worldwide. China’s Peking University and National Tsing Hua University came in at 27th and 30th, marking the first time China has seen two institutions in the list’s top 30.
The United Kingdom continues to dominate the THE rankings with the world’s top two universities. The University of Oxford stands atop the list in first place, while the University of Cambridge came in second, up from fourth a year ago.
Third place was a tie between two institutions in the United States: the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
