THE UNIVERSITY failed to get a rank in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University rankings but earned the “reporter” status, meaning it was among the active participants in the ranking process.
According to the THE website, the reporter status is given to universities that participated in the rankings process but were not ranked this year.
“Practically, this means that they are listed, alphabetically, at the end of the rankings table, and rather than being assigned a rank number, they are instead labelled reporter institutions,” the THE’s explanation of the reporter status read.
“Universities with reporter status will therefore be visible in a way that they weren’t previously, and we will feed back to those universities where they failed to meet the criteria to help them as they work towards admission to future rankings,” it continued.
According to the THE website, universities must submit at least 1,000 papers published in journals indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database in the last five years to be given a rank, since only research-intensive universities are evaluated.
Nestor Ong, head of the UST Office of QS/THE Rankings, told the Varsitarian that the University was not ready to meet the five-year research publication threshold.
“This is the first attempt we have participated in THE Rankings… We are not yet ready to join because of the threshold to have 1,000 publications within five years,” Ong said.
“However, we are challenged to participate this time because we have a better set of data, and we continue to improve our research publications, but we do not yet know if it is sufficient or insufficient in the absence of data analytics,” he added.
Ong said the University had “firm plans” to continue expanding and strengthening UST’s research internationalization efforts.
Ten Philippine universities were included in the 2023 THE rankings, an increase from last year’s three.
Ateneo de Manila is the country’s top university based on the ranking, jumping to the 351-400 bracket from “reporter” status last year and outranking the University of the Philippines (UP).
UP slipped to the 801-1000 bracket from last year’s 601-800.
De La Salle University stayed within the 1201-1500 bracket, while Mapúa University entered the 1501+ bracket.
The Cebu Technological University, Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology, University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines, Tarlac Agricultural University, and Visayas State University also joined the list with the “reporter” status.
The University of Oxford was ranked the No. 1 university worldwide.
The 2023 THE World University rankings evaluated 1,799 universities from 104 countries and regions. A total of 526 universities received the “reporter” status.
The THE World University ranking assesses a university’s performance in five areas: teaching (30 percent), research (30 percent), citations (30 percent), international outlook (7.5 percent), and industry income (2.5 percent). Logan Kal-El M. Zapanta
