More Philippine universities should aim to be included in the world university rankings after a recent world ranking showed that the University of the Philippines was the lone learning institution in the country to make it on the annual list, Sen. Chiz Escudero said.

The state-run UP climbed to the 601-800 range from the “>800 bracket” in the world rankings by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, reaching an overall score of 30.6 out of 100.

“I commend UP for advancing in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, however, this is dismal since no other Philippine universities entered the global rankings. This only goes to show that even the Philippines’ leading universities are struggling in the global arena,” Escudero said.

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According to Escudero, chairman of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture, while the state is trying to provide accessible higher education to the Filipino youth through the Free Tertiary Education Act, the education sector should now gear toward excellence in the international scene by improving the current state of education in the country.

“The country’s education system is facing two crises: accessibility and quality. As we struggle to provide universal access to education, now that we have the free higher education law, we should not lose sight of quality so that our universities will be at par with global elite schools,” Escudero emphasized.

The Times Higher Education World Rankings listed the top 1,000 universities from 77 countries around the globe. The scores are based on 13 “carefully calibrated” performance indicators which covered teaching, knowledge transfer, research, as well as international outlook.

The University of Oxford topped the world university ranking, followed by the University of Cambridge. The California Institute of Technology came in third together with Stanford University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked 5th followed by Harvard University (6th), Princeton University (7th), the Imperial College London (8th) and the University of Chicago (9th). The ETH-Zurich-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and the University of Pennsylvania shared the 10th spot.

The National University of Singapore, which is on the 22nd spot along with the University of Toronto, emerged at the top of the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings, followed by Peking University (2nd) and Tsinghua University (3rd).

Nanyang Technological University in Singapore ranked 4th while the University of Hong Kong ranked 5th.

The University of the Philippines, however, was in the 201-250 bracket based on the Asia University Rankings.

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