See why East Asian universities have risen up the world university rankings

The data is in. 16.5 million research publications have been analysed. 68,000 survey responses have been collected from academics worldwide. Over 2,600 research-intensive universities from 127 countries have been assessed. The results of the 2024 edition of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings have arrived.

The headline is that the UK’s University of Oxford has topped the ranking for the eighth year in a row – the longest time any university has held the number one position in the 20-year history of the world university rankings. It leads a pack of Anglo-American universities that continue to dominate the upper echelons of the prestigious global list: Stanford takes second place; MIT third; Harvard fourth; and the University of Cambridge takes fifth.

But the story behind the rankings’ 20^th edition is the longer-term relative decline of the US and UK, challenged by the continued impressive rise of East Asia – and China in particular.

China now has two top-15 universities in the world university rankings for the first time ever – as Beijing’s Tsinghua University (12th, up from 16th) and Peking University (14^th, up from 17th) edge closer to the world top ten and move ahead of US flagships, University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University. But it is not just China’s two capital city institutions that are making impressive progress: Shanghai’s Fudan University (44) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (43) are both now in the world's top 50, while China now boasts 13 world top-200 universities, up from 11 last year and just seven in 2020.

As Denis Simon, professor of global business at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, told Times Higher Education, the rise of China is one of the most momentous phenomena of the 21^st century, the question should never have been 'if' Chinese universities will crack the world top 10, but rather 'when' they will.

The THE World University Rankings are built on strong data foundations and have become a powerful barometer of the geopolitics of knowledge creation and national strength in the global market for international talent. The methodology covers the full range of priorities for globally-facing, ambitious research universities across 17 separate performance metrics grouped into key performance pillars: teaching; research; industry links; and international outlook.

The changes in the world university rankings pecking order run deeper than simply the eye-catching movers and shakers at the very top of the list. In total, 1,904 universities made the final ranking list and longitudinal analysis by THE’s data team shows the extent of the US and UK decline relative to other national systems. The study of six years' of data, covering countries with at least ten universities included in the rankings every year since 2019, shows that the average rank of US universities has declined from 296 in 2019 to 348 in the latest table; the UK’s average rank has also dropped, to a lesser extent, from 451 to 477. In contrast, the average rank of universities in China improved - from 635 to 502.

The US and UK’s lost ground looks to be influenced by a relative decline in research funding, as competing national systems power-up the knowledge creation and innovation potential of their universities through sustained research investment. As nations worldwide invest in university research, the UK’s absolute amount of research income per academic, for example, has fallen since 2019 – albeit by a very modest 0.3 per cent to $58,800.

As well as China, knowledge-intensive Asian nations, including South Korea, Singapore and Japan, have all had a strong year in the world rankings. An unprecedented 33 Asian universities have joined the elite world top-200 list, up from 28 last year – with Macao joining the 200 club for the first time as University of Macau takes 193^rd place.

Alongside the rise of Asia, there are other forces contributing to what has been described as a steady “global levelling up” in higher education and research, eroding the historic dominance of the West.

Africa now has 113 universities in the world university rankings, up from 97 last year – and 135% more than six years ago. Africa’s only world top-200 university remains the University of Cape Town in South Africa (167^th), but this year saw the University of Johannesburg rise into the world top 500 for the first time and University of Pretoria enter the top 600.

Commenting on the new rankings data, Ming Cheng, professor of higher education at Sheffield Hallam University, told THE that the “waning” relative power of the US and UK suggests a shift of the knowledge economy from West to East. “Perhaps universities in the US and UK could consider learning about the good practices from China,” she said.

A more diverse, and internationally collaborative approach to best practice in higher education and research, as we look to universities to tackle our shared, global grand challenges, is surely welcome.