Asian/Pacific universities poorly represented in the WorldҀs Top-100 Universities

An assessment carried out by AllAboutUni.com reveals that only 8 Asian/Pacific universities are included in the WorldҀs Top-100 universities. AllAboutUni.com is an independent, global and inter-active website where visitors can obtain information about universities (global rankings, student reviews, university news and campus pictures). It publishes regular reports on universities around the world.

The analysis is based on a ranking of the WorldҀs top-500 Universities produced by the Institute of Higher Education at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Several indicators of academic or research performance are used to establish the ranking, these include staff winning Nobel Prizes, highly cited researchers and articles indexed in major citation indices. The rankings have been published since 2003, with the 2008 rankings published on 15 August 2008.

Looking solely at the World's Top-100 universities, there are only 8 universities in the Asian/Pacific region: Tokyo University (ranked 19th), Kyoto University (23rd), Australian National University (59th), Hebrew University of Jerusalem (65th), Osaka University (68th), University of Melbourne (73rd), Tohoku University (79th) and University of Sydney (97th). In comparison, there were 58 universities based in the Americas (mainly in the USA) and 34 in Europe.

Looking at the WorldҀs Top-500 universities, 20% are located in the Asian/Pacific (n=100) area, roughly 40% in Europe (n=210) and 40% in the Americas (n=190). The 100 Asian/Pacific universities are located in the following countries: Japan (31), China (18), Australia (15), South Korea (8), China - Taiwan (7), Israel (6), China - Hong Kong (5), New Zealand (5), Singapore (2) and India (2). A number of factors will affect the Asian/Pacific rankings, including the size of the economy, the level of development, national wealth and population size. However, it seems that India, with a total population of 900 million inhabitants, is poorly represented in the ranking and Australia, with a total population of 20 million inhabitants, is very well represented.

The AllAboutUni.com website provides a portal where students can find independent information about universities from around the world. рThe website allows students to compare colleges and universities online based on independent information: the Shanghai rankings, student reviews and campus pictures. Combining this with the information provided by university websites, we hope students will be able to find the college or university of their dreamsҀ, says John Paget, Founder of the AllAboutUni.com website. John studied Economics at the London School of Economics and then completed graduate studies in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. The AllAboutUni.com website was launched in November 2007.