Hong Kong risks falling further behind Singapore and other Asian rivals, if university rankings are dismissed

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Tsinghua University in Beijing figures among the top 100 in all three major world rankings. Japan, mainland China and Singapore are arguably the best in Asia in terms of the quality of their university education. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:06pm, 11 Jun 2018Updated: 12:31pm, 15 Oct 2020

Not everyone supported university rankings when they started to attract interest in the 1980s, but today, they are an integral part of higher education globally.

Ranking allows us to move beyond the stereotypical Chinese view that in higher education, old means good. It removes self-assumption from the calculation, and moves us towards an objective assessment instead.

Among the several systems for ranking universities, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE) and Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) are the most influential. Each uses different criteria and so produces different results.

The table below reveals that Japan, mainland China and Singapore are arguably the best in Asia, in terms of the quality of their university education; they have the most number of universities ranked among the top 100 in all three systems. Any university that notches up such a performance can be considered excellent.

In comparison, higher education in Hong Kong and South Korea has made some progress and is approaching excellence.

We would come to the same conclusion even if standards were loosened, and not confined to the top-100 standard.