Two universities in Singapore are now topping the chart in Asia, according to the prestigious Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2020.

QS ranks universities based on 11 indicators.

Some of these indicators carry a heavier weightage than others, such as academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-to-student ratio, international research network; citations per paper; papers per faculty; and the number of faculty staff with PhD.

NUS ranks 1st & NTU 2nd

The National University of Singapore (NUS) ranks first among 550 universities in Asia.

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) currently ranks second in Asia, and has displaced The University of Hong Kong (HKU), which took second place in the previous year.

Both NUS and NTU also rank 11th globally, and have achieved almost perfect scores in the key indicators.

Meanwhile, SMU has also moved up two spots, ranking 76th among Asian universities, and rose by 23 spots to 477th in the world.

NUS's overall performance

NUS achieved a perfect overall score, scoring 100 on seven indicators.

Having said that, the only indicator that falls below 90 is the papers produced per faculty.

NTU's overall performance

Notably, NTU's ranking made an extraordinary jump in 2017 and has maintained its global ranking within the top 20 ever since.

Ben Sowter, research director at QS, attributed NTU’s rise to its “heavy technological focus” in research.  

While NTU received an almost-perfect score for most key indicators, the only two indicators that scored below 90 were the number of faculty staff with a PhD, and papers per faculty.

Separately, NTU was also given a 5+ stars for its QS rating.

The QS Stars rating system does not compare universities but assesses them based on a set standard which includes research, innovation, teaching, employability, internationalisation and more.

Globally, only 15 universities have achieved this highest possible rating.

NTU is the only one from Asia to have been given 5+ stars.

Top photo via NUS and NTU websites