Under-50 Universities: Comparing THE and QS

Times Higher Education has just released its list of new universities, those that are less than 50 years old.

The top ten are:
1.   Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech)
2.   EPF Lausanne
3.   Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
4.   Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
5.   Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
6.   Maastricht University
7.   University of California Irvine
8.   Universite Paris-Sud 11
9.   Universite Marie et Pierre Curie
10. Lancaster University

And here are the top ten from QS’s top new universities:

1.   Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
2.   Nanyang Technological University
3.   KAIST
4.   City University of Hong Kong
5.   Pohang University of Science and Technology
6.   Maastricht
7.   University of California Irvine
8.   Hong Kong Polytechnic University
9.   Autonomous University of Barcelona
10. Antwerp University

In some respects the two lists are quite similar. KAIST is in 3rd place, Maastrict in 6th and Irvine in 7th in both lists.Both have two Korean institutions in the top five.

However, there are some noticeable differences, showing the effect of methodology and weighting. There are three Hong Kong universities in QS’s top ten but only one in THE’s, probably reflecting the greater weight given to internationalisation and reputation in the former. City University of Hong Kong is 4th in the QS rankings and 17th in THE’s. Hong Kong Polytechnic University gets 8th and 30th place.

Meanwhile the two French universities in the THE top ten, helped by very substantial scores for citations, are not ranked at all by QS although they had more than enough points in the world rankings. This could be because there are different interpretations about when full university status was achieved.