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Opinion

Hong Kong universities are more than holding their own in Asia

Thomas Barlow says global league tables that show local institutions slipping do not tell the whole story

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A member of a HKU research team demonstrates how to use virtual reality systems for training. The team has developed a VR training system for commercial use. Photo: Chen Xiaomei
Thomas Barlow

A revolution is afoot in the production of knowledge and ideas. The East Asian region now spends more on industrial research and development than either North America or Europe, and the region now matches North America for the number of scientific and scholarly publications produced annually.

These are exciting developments for Asian societies. However, such changes are not yet reflected in university rankings. Fewer than 100 of the top 500 universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities are based in Asia.

Global league tables, which emphasise historical performance and measures with long lead times, such as Nobel Prizes, tend to favour established institutions. Rankings based upon surveys are also susceptible to subjective impressions that often outlast their original justifications. But a shift is under way, which will make it increasingly difficult for Western institutions to maintain their present global standings.

In our latest Asia 100 ranking, we assessed 900 universities across East Asia and Australasia. That’s 400 universities in China, around 200 in Japan, more than 80 in South Korea, more than 70 in Taiwan, 40 in Australia – plus institutions in Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong. In our methodology, as in other rankings, we use multiple metrics to measure research performance. However, we do a couple of things differently. For instance, we rank universities in 60 different disciplines rather than using aggregate data, and we rank according to recent, rather than long-term, performance.
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