The QS World University Rankings 2020 will be launched on June 19.
Once again, the world’s 1,000 top universities will be ranked according to six different criteria: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty to student ratio, citations per faculty, ratio of international faculty members and ratio of international students. More information about the methodology can be found here.
Here are four key things to watch out for in this year’s ranking.
Will record holders stay on top?
Last year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first university ever to be ranked best in the world for seven consecutive years. Can they make it eight?
Their biggest challengers in recent years have been fellow American institutions Stanford University and Harvard University. For either of these universities to get closer to MIT, their biggest area for improvement would be to improve the ratio of international students enrolled. Which brings us onto…
Are top universities becoming less international?
While there was a time when the UK and the US were extremely popular study destinations for international students, it’s safe to say that recent political changes have made both countries less appealing.
Three years on from the Brexit referendum, and two years on from the election of Donald Trump, neither the UK nor the US is proving to be as enticing for talented students. Given the focus our rankings place on international diversity, universities in both countries are in serious danger of dropping down in rank.
Can China continue to rise?
As universities in the west begin to struggle, Chinese universities are in ascendancy, buoyed by heavy investment in research. This is typically reflected in our rankings by the indicator measuring citations per faculty.
Tsinghua University was the best university in China last year and will be looking to build on its rank of 17th, while Peking University and Fudan University also featured in the top 50. It wouldn’t be surprising to see all three do even better this year.
Who will be on top in Singapore?
Singapore may only be home to three of the world’s top 1,000 universities, but last year two of them were ranked within the top 12 in the world. The National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University have been almost inseparable, ranked 11th and 12th respectively last year, and it will be fascinating to see whether either has been able to crack the global top 10 this year.
Find out the answers to these questions and much more by reading the full results on June 19.
