Top Philippine universities drop places in latest THE rankings

MANILA, Philippines — Top Philippine universities part of the 2024 Times Higher Education (THE)'s World University Rankings fell a few spots from last year, with Ateneo de Manila University continuing to lead Philippine schools.

Ateneo slid to 1001-1200th place from a rank of 351-400 in last year’s global rankings. The University of the Philippines, which placed second, fell from its tier of 801-1000 down to 1201-1500. 

De La Salle University sank from the 1201-1500 tier to the 1501+ category while the University of Santo Tomas improved to a 1501+ rank compared to last year’s “Reporter” status.

Mapua University, which entered the rankings for the first time last year, fell to “Reporter” status this year.

A “Reporter” status is given to a school when it submits data to THE but falls short of meeting the criteria needed to be ranked against other schools.

Universities this year are evaluated across five areas: teaching (29.5%), research environment (29%), research quality (30%), international outlook (7.5%), and industry (4%).

“Research environment” and “research quality” are new names for categories that used to be just “research” and “citations,” based on last year’s rankings.

This year’s rankings introduced more performance indicators, increasing them from 13 to 18. Schools are now also evaluated according to their research quality and the number of granted patents.

Commission on Higher Education Chairperson Popoy De Vera said in a statement sent to media that there could be a few factors behind Philippine universities’ drop in places in this year’s THE ranking.

“There are additional HEIs that joined the rankings. So if the scores of the new/additional HEIs are high, they will be ranked higher than Phil HEIs and the rank of Phil HEIs will go down,” De Vera said.

Other universities may also be “improving their scores faster” than Philippine universities, De Vera said.

“So what we should look at are the scores of Phil HEIs this year compared to last year. If the total scores have increased but their rank is lower then any of the two reasons above can apply,” he added.

Ateneo has a lower overall score (29.3 - 32.6) in the 2024 THE ranking compared to last year (45.0 - 46.9). This is also the same for UP, which scored 22.8 - 28.2 in 2024 compared to 29.8 - 33.9 last year.

De La Salle University similarly had a lower score this year (9.7 - 22.7) compared to last year (18.4 - 24.3).

Other Philippine universities with a “Reporter” status are the following:

• Cebu Technological University
• Central Luzon State University
• University of Eastern Philippines
• Mapúa University
• Mariano Marcos State University
• Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology
• Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology
• University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines
• Tarlac Agricultural University
• Visayas State University

Oxford University in the United Kingdom retained its position as the leading university in the THE ranking. This is followed by Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.