What happened to the National University of Singapore?
The National University of Singapore is among the best in Asia and has always been ranked highly by THES-QS. This year, however, it has fallen from 19th to 33rd.
THES suggest that Malaysian and Singaporean universities have suffered because the "peer review" no longer allows respondents to pick their own institutions. This would, not however, seem to apply to NUS -- and I wonder whether it applies to Malaysian universities either -- which got the maximum score of 100 (along with Oxford, Harvard and Caltech) on the survey. What happened was that NUS scored very poorly on the faculty student section.
It got 100 for "peer review", international faculty and international students, 93 for recruiter review, 84 for citations per faculty and 34 for faculty student ratio.
NUS has a self-reported ratio of about 17 students per faculty. Peking reports about 10 but QS gives it a score of 98, almost the same as Caltech at 100 with a well known ratio of about three.
There is something about this that needs some explanation.
I think there is no need to take this kind of report seriously, especially one done in UK. Look at how many UK universities moved up the ranking! It's obvious. I am sure they will change the criteria again but be sure many UK universities will be there, including those no one has heard of. A university is considered good not be means of such ranking.
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