Mainland China has increased its dominance in the Times Higher Education’s latest ranking focused on developing countries, but South Africa and Saudi Arabia outshine the country based on average performance.
China has 14 places in the top 30, up from 12 last year, including all of the top four places. Tsinghua University remains number one, while Peking University is second, and Zhejand University is third, THE reported.
Russia, Taiwan and South Africa are the only other territories that feature in the top 10.
Romania’s Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, in the northwest Transylvanian region, is listed in the 200-250 section followed by the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies which is in the 251-300 section, a jump from the previous year when it was in a lower category.
The Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iași and the University of Bucharest and the West University of Timisoara came next in the ranking. Nine Romanian universities are ranked in all.
Mainland China is also the most-represented nation overall, with 81 institutions, against India’s 56 and Brazil’s 46.
The rankings use the same 13 performance indicators as the THE World University Rankings to judge institutions on their teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. But the weightings are different to reflect the development priorities of universities in emerging economies.
Overall, 533 universities from 47 countries or regions are included in the ranking.
The Emerging Economies University Rankings includes only institutions in countries classified by the London Stock Exchange’s FTSE Group as “advanced emerging,” “secondary emerging” or “frontier.” Romania is classified as a frontier country.
