Seoul National University Falls Outside Top 50 in World University Rankings... Drops to 62nd for Third Consecutive Year

Yonsei University, Sungkyunkwan University, and Others Significantly Improve in International Rankings
Seoul National University, Korea's No.1, Drops 8 Places Over 3 Years
Global Top 5 Dominated by US and UK Universities

UK-based university ranking organization Times Higher Education (THE) announced the 2024 World University Rankings on the 27th (local time). While domestic universities such as Yonsei University, KAIST, and POSTECH generally showed improvement, Seoul National University appeared to be somewhat sluggish.

THE releases a comprehensive ranking list every year in collaboration with the global database company Elsevier, evaluating universities worldwide based on various indicators. The indicators included in the score are ▲research quality ▲teaching environment ▲research environment ▲internationalization ▲industry-academia collaboration.

Seoul National University Main Gate [Image Source=Seoul National University]

Among domestic universities, Yonsei University's progress was remarkable. Previously, Yonsei University rose 73 places from the previous year to rank 78th last year, and this year it climbed 2 more places to 76th.

KAIST ranked 83rd, rising 8 places from a joint 91st last year. Sungkyunkwan University also improved overall, moving up 25 places from 170th last year to 145th.

On the other hand, Seoul National University, the top domestic university, has seen its ranking decline in recent years. Seoul National University's rankings were 54th in 2021, 56th last year, and 62nd this year, dropping 8 places over three years.

THE reportedly strengthened the evaluation criteria for research quality starting this year. As a result, the number of top Asian universities ranked within the global top 200 also increased. China's representative prestigious universities Tsinghua University and Peking University ranked 12th and 14th, respectively. The National University of Singapore ranked 19th, and Japan's top university ranked 29th, significantly ahead of Seoul National University.

Meanwhile, the top five universities worldwide were all dominated by English-speaking countries. The world number one spot was held by the University of Oxford in the UK for the second consecutive year, followed by Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, and the University of Cambridge in the UK. The highest-ranked university in Europe outside the UK was ETH Zurich in Switzerland, ranked 11th.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.