China leads Times Higher Education’s (THE) Emerging Economies University Rankings 2020, but South Africa and Saudi Arabia have achieved the highest average scores.
China topped the latest THE ranking on Emerging Economies University 2020, a classification designed for institutions in developing countries. Its definition of developing economies is based on the London Stock Exchange’s FTSE Group, which groups countries as advanced emerging, secondary emerging, and frontier.
In these rankings, mainland China claimed seven spots in the top 10, including the top four places. Tsinghua University claimed the first place as Peking University, Zhejiang University, and University of Science and Technology of China followed behind. There were seven other Chinese institutions included in the top 30, totaling 14 places in the top 30.
The only other countries in the top 10 were from Russia, Taiwan, and South Africa.
Mainland China was also one of the most represented countries with 82 institutions, and India (2nd) and Brazil (3rd) followed with 56 and 46 institutions respectively.
However, South Africa was the top performer based on overall average scores, receiving an average score of 41.3 out of 100.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia joined the ranks after gaining the “secondary emerging” last year and entered a new contender in the form of King Abdulaziz University, which currently ranks at 13. Saudi Arabia also had the second highest overall score of 40.3.
Brazil declined in this year’s rankings despite the improvement of its top institution University of São Paulo, which went from 15th place to the 14th.
The Emerging Economies University Rankings follows the same criteria as the World University Rankings, but the allocations per criteria is adjusted to reflect the needs priorities of the developing countries.
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