England based university evaluation institute, Times Higher Education(THE), announced it’s 2015 Asian University Rankings on the 10th where the Korea’s  leading SKY universities(Seoul National Univ. Yonsei Univ. Korea Univ.) dropped  while Sungkyunkwan University(SKKU) along with University of Seoul. Ewha Woman’s University. Hanyang University. excelled in the rankings.

Last year placing itself at 27th, SKKU rose to 16th this year. In other rankings POSTEC took 11th from last year’s 10th, Korea 26th from 23rd, Yonsei 28th from 17th, and KAIST took 10 from 8th.

SKKU by strengthening industry & university collaboration with Samsung, recruiting more Science and Engineering professors and investing more in research capacity, has shown a great rise in it’s rankings,

THE’s Asian University Ranking is based on five categories: industry-university collaboration, education and educational environment, thesis citations, research volume and reputation, and internationalization, using 13 indicators that are calculated into points that decide the ranking. Education and research are evaluated through a reputation survey made with 70,000 people worldwide, assessing 50 million thesis citations.

“Korea invests 4% of it’s GDP in research which results in top positions in the  university rankings. However, due to fierce competition between universities more efforts will be needed” Phil Betty editor of THE predicted.

In the Asian Rankings Japan’s Tokyo University, National university of Singapore(NUS), Hongkong University took 1st, 2nd and 3rd place with China’s Beijing University and Tsinghua University, each moving up one positions, are at 4th and 5th.