THE UNIVERSITY went down 11 spots in the 2024 AppliedHE Southeast Asian Private University Rankings, placing 16th out of 80 ranked universities from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
UST scored 63.32 overall in the 2024 tally, lower than the 65.17 points in the 2023 edition, in which it ranked fifth.
Still, UST kept its status as the top private Philippine university in the AppliedHE rankings.
The University scored 9.67 in institutional reputation, the second best after De La Salle University, which scored 10.
It fell out of the top 10 in terms of internationalization and community engagement, where it placed ninth and eighth, respectively, last year.
Ateneo de Manila University ranked second among Philippine private universities and 18th Asean-wide with a score of 62.51.
It was followed by Manila Central University with 62.49 points (19th Asean-wide), De La Salle University with 61.51 points (24th Asean-wide), and Trinity University of Asia with 59.85 points (30th Asean-wide).
A total of 21 Philippine universities entered the latest AppliedHE rankings, up from last year’s six.
The number of ranked private universities in Southeast Asia also increased to 80 from 24 last year.
Sunway University in Malaysia emerged as the top private university in Southeast Asia with a score of 72.42. It was not included in the 2023 edition of the rankings.
Bina Nusantara University in Indonesia, the top university last year, slipped to sixth place after scoring 66.20.
The AppliedHE rankings assessed the performance of the participating universities using six criteria: teaching and learning (40 percent), employability (20 percent), research (10 percent), community engagement (10 percent), internationalization (10 percent) and institutional reputation (10 percent).