World University Rankings 2015-2016 by Subject: Engineering & Technology More About Science, Engineering & Technology in China

Balance of power continues to shift towards Asia in disciplines

Students demonstrate lion dance robot, RoboGame competition in China

Asia has continued its progress in this year’s Times Higher Education ranking for engineering and technology subjects as the dominance of the US and Europe wanes.

Asian institutions now make up more than a quarter of the list, claiming 26 spots among the world top 100, up from 19 last year. Overall, eight Asian countries feature in the table, including India, which makes its debut courtesy of the Indian Institute of Science, at 99th place.

All nations in the region have either held a steady performance or improved in terms of the number of universities featured since last year. China has doubled its representatives from three to six, while both Taiwan and South Korea have gained another, with two and five universities in the table, respectively.

The National University of Singapore is the highest-ranked Asian institution, at 13th place, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is just three places behind, in 16th.

As one reason for its success, Tongxi Yu, the institution’s acting dean of engineering, cited Hong Kong’s switch in 2012 to four-year undergraduate degrees, which allowed for the creation of a curriculum that is “student-centric, broad-based, interdisciplinary and holistic in nature”. He also referred to the university’s establishment of a Center for Engineering Education Innovation, which “fosters innovative learning”.

Although the US remains the rankings superpower, it has lost ground, dropping from 34 representatives last year to 31.

Four of the 11 European countries in the table – the UK, France, the Netherlands and Sweden – have also slipped. At the same time, Turkey and Finland – each of which featured a representative in last year’s table, in 99th and 100th place, respectively – have fallen out of the table. Germany is the only European nation to have gained a representative in the list, boasting seven institutions in the table, up from six.

This shift in the balance of power towards Asia reflects the success of reforms that have been adopted across the region in the past two decades, said Alessia Lefébure, director of the Alliance programme (an academic joint venture between Columbia University, École Polytechnique, Sciences Po and Panthéon-Sorbonne University – Paris 1) and co-editor of the book Asia: The Next Higher Education Superpower? (recently published by the Institute of International Education and the American Institute for Foreign Study).

“The best performers are found in countries where motivated universities are nurtured by national and local governments that concentrate funding on the high potentials, push for innovation, and facilitate the transfer of knowledge from foreign partners,” she said. “China has used this formula successfully since the late 1990s, but Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan have similar policies.”

She added: “Today most Asian countries are funding the training of thousands of PhD [students], especially in sciences and engineering. This is going to have a strong impact on Asian industries and economies in the next 30 years.”

The THE subject rankings use the same 13 performance indicators as the flagship World University Rankings but are recalibrated with different weightings to suit each field. - The Times Higher Education

The six Chinese universities among the world top 100 are as follows:

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2. Chinese University Tops MIT in Engineering Rankings