4 universities in Hong Kong fall in global ranking of top 100 institutions

Four universities in Hong Kong have slipped in a global ranking of the top 100 tertiary institutions compiled by a prominent British-based publication, marking a reversal of a general upwards trend for local campuses last year.

The annual ranking, published by Times Higher Education on Wednesday and covering more than 1,900 institutions across 108 countries and regions, also showed that locally only City University (CityU) had risen in the top 100 section of the list compared with last year.

The publication said the drop in the listings among the city’s universities was partly due to an increase in the number of institutions taking part, rising from 1,799 last year.

The four universities also suffered slight decreases in their teaching reputation, student-to-staff ratios and international collaboration, it added.

“Ultimately, the ranking drop is mostly caused by the drop in reputation as this metric has the largest weight among the three,” it said. “Drops in student-staff ratio and international co-authorship might be caused by the border closures due to Covid.”

The University of Hong Kong (HKU), the city’s oldest tertiary institution, fell four spots from 31st last year to 35th, ranking the highest among all local campuses.

A HKU spokesman said the university was confident its international reputation would continue to flourish and committed itself to offering an exceptional education to students.

Chinese University slipped from 45th to 53rd place after three straight years of climbing the ranks.

The university said the school had improved significantly from last year, scoring well in categories such as research quality.

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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Polytechnic University fell to 64th from 58th and 87th from 79th, respectively. Both had risen up the list in the previous year.

Both institutions said they would study the rankings and other information to help identify areas in need of improvement.

CityU was the only local institution that continued to move up, clinching the 82nd spot compared with 99th the previous year. The university entered the top 100 for the first time last year by leaping from 151st to 99th.

Baptist University rose from the 501-600 section to the 301-350 portion of the list this year.

The 20th edition of the list was compiled after analysing 16.5 million research publications and 134 million citations linked to those papers, along with more than 68,000 responses from an annual academic reputation survey, according to the publication.

Times Higher Education has also updated its methodology to include five new performance metrics which look at research quality and industry patents.

The 18 indicators are grouped into five categories, namely teaching, research environment, research quality, industry and international outlook.

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The publication said that compared with the world average, universities in Hong Kong excelled in the international outlook metric and had shown improvements in the industry and research quality pillars.

“New performance indicators have really highlighted some great areas of international strength in Hong Kong – not least the excellence of its research and also its leadership in creating intellectual property, shown through an examination of patents,” said Phil Baty, Times Higher Education global affairs officer.

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The University of Oxford in the United Kingdom continued to hold the No 1 spot for the eighth straight year, followed by Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

The US continued to dominate the ranking, with seven universities making it into the top 10, and 13 into the top 20.

The publication said mainland China had the highest-ranking universities in Asia overall and saw the biggest improvement over the last five years.

Seven mainland universities are in the top 100, with Tsinghua University and Peking University securing the 12th and 14th spots, respectively.

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The University of Macau climbed into the top 200, coming in at 193, which Baty said suggested a “very bright future for the Greater Bay Area”.

“Hong Kong is at the very heart of a thriving global knowledge hub in the bay area, providing a bridge between East and West to draw in international talent and driving the knowledge economy,” he said, referring to a national initiative to integrate Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities into an economic powerhouse.

Asia is the most represented continent with 737 universities on the list, and made the most improvements in teaching and research quality.

The National University of Singapore’s ranking remained unchanged at 19th place, while Nanyang Technological University, also from the island state, climbed to 32nd from 36th.