Five Hong Kong universities enter global top 100 ranking

Five public universities in Hong Kong have ranked among the top 100 in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings, which described the results as evidence of a continuing shift in academic strength towards Asia. The University of Hong Kong remained the city’s highest-ranked institution, retaining 33rd place. The Chinese University of Hong Kong ranked 42nd, down from 41st, while the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology held 58th place.

City University rose three places to 70th, its highest position in the rankings, and Polytechnic University advanced one place to 79th. Baptist University ranked 205th, compared with a position in the 201–250 band the previous year. Lingnan University rose to 257th from the 301–350 band.

The Chinese University said it received full marks across five performance measures: research excellence, patents, research and institutional income, research productivity and the proportion of international staff. It also reported gains in teaching reputation, student-staff ratio and the share of international students. The latest ranking covered 2,297 institutions across 118 countries and territories.

Times Higher Education said it was based on about 20 million research papers, around 1 million votes in an academic reputation survey and institutional data from more than 3,000 universities. The 17 performance measures were grouped into teaching, research environment, research quality, industry and international outlook. The publication said Asian institutions recorded a particularly strong showing, with universities from the continent entering the global top 15 for the first time.

Beijing’s Tsinghua University was Asia’s highest-ranked institution at 11th, followed by Peking University at 13th and the National University of Singapore at 15th. Mainland China had more than 100 universities in the table, including eight in the top 100. Phil Baty, Times Higher Education’s chief global affairs officer, said the results included several symbolic milestones, including the first time a mainland Chinese university ranked ahead of an institution in continental Europe.

He also said the United States had its lowest number of institutions in the top 200. Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology retained first and second places. Princeton and Stanford tied for third, while Cambridge, Harvard, Caltech, Imperial College London, the University of California, Berkeley and Yale completed the top 10.