For the last nine years, Times Higher Education, a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market, has put out a list of what it deems to be the world’s top universities. Then last year THE decided to issue a new list, of 100 universities that are just 50 years old or younger. According to Phil Baty, THE’s rankings editor, the magazine wanted to demonstrate that the U.S. and the U.K., which dominate most higher ed lists, are facing an impressive crop of up-and-comers. “This ranking is trying to identify emerging talent and future stars,” says Baty. “It’s meant to be a glimpse of the future.”
Of these top new universities, only eight are in the U.S. The U.K. has a stronger showing, with 20 schools, but Baty says the greatest growth is coming from Asia. “We’ve seen incredible progress in South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and to a certain extent Taiwan, where they’ve managed to build universities that are already doing really well in the global rankings,” he notes. The Middle East is also making a strong showing, with two Saudi Arabian schools, an Iranian university and two Turkish universities making the list.
At the top for the second year in a row: South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology, which is just 27 years old. Known as Postech, the school has gotten substantial financial support from POSCO, a major Korean steel company located in the same city. “The school is super-successful in getting businesses to part with their money and the school’s research is focused very much on meeting the demands of industry for new technology,” says Baty. POSCO’s then-CEO, the late Tae-Joon Park, founded the school. It was modeled after the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, with an emphasis on science and engineering. Since 2010, it has run as a bilingual institution with most of its lectures and faculty meetings held in English. Postech is relatively small, with 1,400 undergraduates and 1,900 graduate students. Though most of the student body is Korean, it is making an effort to attract foreign students. Postech is very affordable by U.S. standards: Tuition is only $5,400 and the total cost per year is just $9,000.
Unlike the U.S. News & World Report rankings or Forbes’ own college rankings system, THE does not measure things like entry requirements, graduation rates, SAT scores, professor ratings by students or alumni salaries. Instead it emphasizes global scholarship and reputation. THE gathers data on points like the number of times the school is cited in academic research, the impact of those citations on other research, and the volume, income and reputation of research the school produces. It also looks at the number of degrees awarded to undergraduates and to the academic staff, and teaching measures, like staff-to-student ratios and a survey of teacher reputations. (For more on THE’s ranking methods, click here.) To compile the under-50 list, THE gives less weight to international prestige than it does in its larger World University ranking.
Of the schools on the under-50 list, the top 20 all rank on THE’s list of the top 200 universities, establishing themselves as competitors with the world’s top schools. Because the under-50 list puts less weight on prestige, says Baty, it is more relevant for students looking to get a top-flight education while working directly with professors. “The younger universities are more focused on the student experience,” he says. “Fewer of their professors will be searching for a cure for cancer and more will be working with students on applied research with immediate, real-world applications.”
Number two on the list, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, traces its roots back farther than 50 years. It started out as part of an institution founded by the Swiss government back in 1853. But in 1969 it split from the larger University of Lausanne and then established its own campus in a suburb southwest of the city in 1978. Like Postech, EPFL emphasizes science and engineering. Still run by the Swiss government, it has its own nuclear reactor on campus which it uses to teach reactor physics. EPFL has a student body of 8,500 students. Partly because of the high cost of living in Switzerland, the annual cost, at $22,000, is much higher than at Postech, though the tuition is only $2,700.
The third school on the list, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), was founded by the South Korean government in 1971 and has a similar emphasis to the top two schools on the list, with a focus on science and engineering. In 2009 it merged with another state school, the Information and Communications University. KAIST moved up in the under-50 rankings this year, from fifth place, in part because, like Postech, it gets a great deal of income from companies that want to take advantage of its research. At the same time it has boosted its scholarly output, publishing more papers in international journals and getting cited and shared by other academics. KAIST has 10,250 students including 670 international students. Tuition for all freshmen is free. For those who maintain a grade point average of 3.0 or above, KAIST covers the complete $3,000 tuition cost. For students with a GPA of between 2.0 and 3.0, it pays half the tuition.
Baty is also enthusiastic about the No. 4 and No. 8 schools on the list, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which ranks 65 on THE’s master list, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, which ranks 86. Nanyang opened in 1991 as an engineering school and has since expanded far beyond, with a focus on science, technology and international partnerships, including one with Imperial College, London, for a new medical school. Nanyang also works closely with auto makers like Rolls Royce, Volvo and BMW, which support its programs. Tuition, at $22,000, is much higher than at some of the state schools, but still not as high as a private American school like Tufts, which happens to rank in 87th place, just after Nanyang on THE’s master list. Tuition at Tufts is $43,688.
One more school Baty says is up and coming as a destination for international students: Maastricht University in the Netherlands where 47% of the school’s 15,900 student come from outside the country. It ranks No. 6 on the list.
The highest-ranked U.S. school on the under-50 list comes in at No. 5, the University of California, Irvine, founded in 1965 to accommodate the growing number of students enrolling in the U.C. system.
Adventurous American students should keep the low costs of some of the top new universities in mind. Aside from KAIST, which pays the total tuition of students with strong grade point averages, the two French universities in the top ten offer great deals. At Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, undergraduate tuition is only $335 and at Université Paris-Sud in Orsay it is totally free for all students.
Baty says the under-50 list shows how much the world of higher education is changing, with both the private and public sectors in many countries outside the U.S. and the U.K. investing in young universities. He encourages American and British students to consider traveling overseas. “If you’re an ambitious student, you can get a fantastic education in Singapore or Hong Kong. You’d be at the heart of Eastern cultural understanding and at the center of the booming economies of the East.”
For THE's complete list of the top 100 universities under 50 years old, click here.
