The Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology is the newest Philippine educational institution to appear in the Quacquarelli Symonds World Rankings’ top 500 Asian universities for 2019.
The University of the Philippines (72), Ateneo de Manila University (115), De La Salle University (155) and University of Santo Tomas (162) appeared in the top 300 of the list
They were also joined by the University of San Carlos in the 301-350 bracket, Mapua University in the 401-450 bracket, and the MSU-IIT and Siliman University in the 451-500 bracket.
Only UP rose in the rankings from the previous year, having climbed from 75 in 2018 to 72 in the 2019 list.
MSU-IIT is the newest school to make the cut. Mapua University previously ranked in the top 300 in 2012, when it was still officially known as the Mapua Institute of Technology.
The National University of Singapore ranked first overall in the list among, replacing China’s Nanyang Technological University.
Waves of congratulations have come for the schools in the list, especially for the newcomer MSU-IIT.
The Iligan campus of my alma mater is the first Mindanao State University's branch to be rated as in the top 500 universities in Asia.
Congratulations, Chancellor Dr. Sukarno Tangol.
Congratulations, Chancellor Tanggol https://t.co/dYXsSjdNdq
— Berteni C. Causing (@toto_causing) October 25, 2018
Proud MSUan! #TatakMSU#RewopNaUSM https://t.co/aWMSt0zyff
— Dr. Lee (@lee_laya) October 25, 2018
UP has also been applauded for improving in the rankings when the other schools slipped.
Wow. UP improved its ranking in the QS Top 500 Universities in Asia while other PH unis slipped. https://t.co/1zf0GKDCEl
— Aaron Lozada (@aaron_lozada) October 24, 2018
Commission on Higher Education chair Prospero de Vera praised the institutions that made the list, saying that he “looked forward to more Philippine universities entering the top 500 in the coming years.”
Some of the schools however noted how different publications use different criteria in judging the universities’ competency.
The De La Salle University in a correspondence with Business World explained the variance, saying that “QS rankings are driven chiefly by the results of an academic reputation survey among faculty and researchers worldwide, different from other bodies that prioritize criteria like publication output, citations, internationalization of faculty and staff, etc.”
“There are many other measures that allow DLSU to take stock of its performance. There is no ‘one’ standard that can accurately measure excellence,” it said.
Eleven factors are considered by QS in their annual list: academic reputation (30 percent weight); employer reputation (20 percent); faculty-student ratio, international research network and citations per paper (10 percent each); papers per faculty and staff with doctorate degrees (5 percent); international students, inbound exchange and outbound exchange (2.5 percent).
UP and DLSU were the only Philippine universities that made the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2019 released in September 2018.
UP appeared in the 501 to 600 bracket while DLSU placed in the 801-1000 in the London-based publication’s annual ranking of the top 1,000 universities in the world.
It named the United Kingdom’s Oxford University and University of Cambridge as the two best universities in the world.
