Universitas Indonesia (UI) has remained at the first rank in Indonesia for the past three years based on the rankings by Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings 2024. In addition, UI’s position at the Asian level went up from 251-300 to 201-250. UI is also one of 33 universities in Indonesia that participated in this ranking to be listed in the top 20 best universities in Southeast Asia.
UI Rector, Prof. Ari Kuncoro, S.E., M.A., Ph.D, said that THE Asia University Rankings this year implemented a change in ranking methodology. “Research conducted by academics no longer focuses on the quantity, but the quality of research. Universities are expected to work with various partners so that research results can be implemented into innovations, value creation, and benefit the wider community. Hopefully, in the future, UI can grow and improve this achievement,” said Prof. Ari.
Changes in the methodology of THE Asia University Rankings 2024 are in line with changes in the methodology of THE World University Rankings, one of which is related to the quality of research which was previously called citations or citations. THE, which previously only measured the impact of citations based on field weighting, now takes into account the strength, excellence, and influence of research. This new measure gives a better picture of the amount of high-quality research being produced by different institutions.
Another change to THE’s methodology is the addition of a metric that tracks how often university research is cited in patents, as part of the industry pillar. According to THE’s Managing Director of Data Science, David Watkins, the new metric allows THE to directly measure the level of knowledge transfer from academia to industry. This provides new insights into the positive impact universities have on society at large.
There are five aspects that are indicators of THE Asia University Rankings 2024, namely Industry Income, International Outlook, Research Environment, Research Quality, and Teaching. UI scored 51.9 for the Industry Income indicator; 35.9 for Research Quality; and 26.9 for Research Environment. Meanwhile, UI experienced an increase in scores from last year in the International Outlook indicator (from 54.8 to 60.3) and Teaching (from 46.6 to 53.2).
THE Asia Rankings 2024 was announced during THE Asia Summit 2024 which took place at Sunway University, Malaysia, on April 29-May 1, 2024. Also present as a guest speaker was UI’s Head of Bureau of Transformation, Risk Management, and Evaluation Monitoring (TREM), Vishnu Juwono, who presented a presentation titled “Universities as Agents of Social Change: Building A Value-Centric Campus Culture”. He said, “We are very proud that UI achieved the first position in Indonesia for more than 3 years in a row. Of course, this increase in UI’s ranking is expected to be a momentum to achieve a position close to the top 10 in Southeast Asia.”
In this 12th edition, the number of participants in THE Asia University Rankings increased compared to last year, from 616 universities to 739 universities from 31 regions in Asia. China dominates with 33 universities in the country ranked in the top 100. The top 5 universities in THE Asia University Rankings 2024 are Tsinghua University, China; Peking University, China; National University of Singapore; Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and The University of Tokyo, Japan.
