Korean Universities Slide in Rankings

Published on 2019/12/01 | Source

Korean universities slackened in this year's Asia University Rankings, with only the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology staying on the top 10.

And even KAIST slid by one notch to ninth from last year. Seoul National University dropped out of the top 10 to 11th.

Four Korean universities -- KAIST, SNU, Korea University (12th) and Sungkyunkwan University (16th) -- made the top 20 in the rankings published jointly by the Chosun Ilbo and Quacquarelli Symonds on Wednesday.

A total of 557 universities in 18 Asian countries and territories were ranked this year. National University of Singapore topped the list as usual, followed by the same country's Nanyang Technological University, which rose by a notch from third last year.

Four Chinese universities, including Tsinghua (4th) and Peking (5th), and two universities in Hong Kong -- the University of Hong Kong (3rd) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (10th) -- made the top 10.

Martin Ince at QS said Korea should be concerned that the downgrading of its universities could be due to weakening competitiveness across the board rather than routine yearly fluctuations.