An Asian country has for the first time broken into the top 10 of national higher education systems, according to the second annual Universitas 21 rankings. Singapore jumped two places to ninth in the overall table, which ranks 50 countries on measures including investment, gender balance, international connectivity and research output. The UK remains in 10th place.

Ross Williams, one of the report’s authors and a professorial fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, says the city-state is “beefing up its ancillary institutions”. These universities are now “actively recruiting top researchers” from around the world in “a deliberate attempt to make it an important research country in Asia and the world,” says Prof. Williams.

Singapore is ranked eighth in the table for ‘resources’, a metric that combines government, total and per-student spending on tertiary education, as well as research and development expenditure. It is third for ‘connectivity’, which rates the number of international students and the amount of global research collaboration.

The state is ranked only 18th in the ‘output’ rating — a measure of research output and excellence, and the number of researchers and students in the nation per head of population — but Williams says there will inevitably be a “lag effect” between Singapore’s investment and results. In the fourth metric, ‘environment’, which covers government policy, diversity and participation, Singapore is ranked 12th. “While the government contribution (in terms of the proportion of gross domestic product) is very low, what’s interesting is that an above-average component of that is for research and development,” says Williams.

The US tops the overall table, followed by Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and Denmark. Switzerland climbed from sixth to third place, the result of international research collaborations, Williams explains. It also jumped two places to top the connectivity table.

For the first time Saudi Arabia was included and is ranked 28th overall. The kingdom has been investing heavily in the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to attract top researchers and students from around the world. It finished 45th in output, despite coming seventh in terms of resources.

Universitas 21 is a global network of 24 research-intensive universities which has been active since 1997.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)