The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology is the only Korean university in the top 10 of the latest Asian University Rankings. KAIST came eighth in the tally by the Chosun Ilbo and U.K. ranking firm Quacquarelli Symonds, and China's Peking University ranked first.
The rankings of three out of four Korean universities slipped this year, the first year that a Chinese university has topped the list since the rankings began in 2009. Peking University ranked seventh in 2020 and second last year.
The National University of Singapore relinquished its first place after three years, while Beijing's Tsinghua University rose from fifth to third place.
The University of Hong Kong came fourth, Singapore's Nanyang Technological University fifth, China's Fudan University and Zhejiang University tied for sixth, Universiti Malaya of Malaysia ninth, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University 10th. That brings the total of mainland Chinese universities in the top 10 to five for the second year running.
But only 12 Korean universities managed to improve their rankings, while 11 stayed in place and 66 dropped. The number of Chinese universities in the top 100 increased from 23 in 2019 to 25 this year while that of Korean universities dwindled from 18 to 16 and Japanese from 14 to 13.
Korean universities performed particularly poorly in quantity and quality of research. Only six made it into the top 100 this year in the category "papers per faculty" -- Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), KAIST, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology (UNIST) and Seoul National University. That contrasts with 43 productive Chinese universities, up from 37 last year.
Only eight Japanese universities were in the top 100 in this category, down from 12 last year.
Korean universities also performed poorly in "citations per paper," which aims to gauge the quality of research, with just 15 in the top 100 compared to 53 Chinese universities.
The decline in Korean universities' research competitiveness is being attributed to a lack of adequate government support and a tuition freeze over the past 14 years.
