Top PH universities improve global rankings

STATE SCHOLARS The University of the Philippines Oblation stands tall in front of the administration building in Diliman Campus in Quezon City, where the premier state university is located. —Inquirer file photo

MANILA, Philippines—Three of the country’s top universities improved their ratings in this year’s edition of the World University Rankings of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), with the University of the Philippines (UP) showing the biggest improvement from its previous standing.

QS posted on its website a list of universities from all over the world, ranking the quality of higher education they offer and the graduates they produce.

According to QS, this year’s ranking was the “largest ever,” as it included 1,500 universities across 105 higher education systems.

READ: UP makes it to 2024 QS World University Rankings in 3 subjects

Most of the universities were from the United States, with 197 ranked institutions; the United Kingdom, with 90; and China, with 71 universities.

For the Philippines, five universities were ranked by QS, including UP, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University (DLSU), University of Santo Tomas (UST) and University of San Carlos (USC) in Cebu.

UP saw a significant improvement in this year’s rankings, rising to 336 from its previous year’s ranking of 404 with an overall score of 33.

READ: Ateneo tops in Times Higher Education ranking for PH universities in 2024

Ateneo also saw an improvement in its ranking, from 563 in 2024 ascending to 516 this year.

This was followed by DLSU, which also had a higher rank, now ranging between the brackets of 641-650 from its past year’s ranking of 681-690.

Ateneo had an overall score of 23.6, according to the QS, while there was no score for DLSU.

Metrics

Last month, Ateneo had the highest ranking among Philippine universities in the 2024 Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings.

THE listing had Ateneo at the 401–500 rank, followed by De La Salle and UP in the 501–600 rank.

Meanwhile, Mapua University and UST were both included in the 601+ rank.

According to THE, the ranking includes 739 universities from 31 territories.

It said that the Asia University Rankings use the same 18 performance indicators as the World University Rankings but are recalibrated to reflect the attributes of Asia’s institutions.

At the same time, two of the country’s universities slipped from their previous rankings: UST was now 851-900, lower compared to its last year’s ranking bracket of 801-1,000 while USC was now down to the 1,401+ bracket, falling from its QS ranking of 1,201-1,400 bracket.