Page 54 - EW-June-2025

International News

Three institutions were placed on UK Visas and Immi- The ASIA University Rankings 2025: Top 10 universities
gration (UKVI) action plans last year for failing to uphold Rank Rank InstituTion Country /
visa sponsorship requirements. If universities fail to comply 2024 2025 region
with the new thresholds, they could have their licences to 1 1 Tsinghua University China
recruit international students suspended or revoked.
Davies says it’s up to UKVI to decide whether or not 2 2 Peking University China
someone is issued a visa and “they don’t tell us when they 3 3 National University of Singapore Singapore
refuse a student. We worry that enforcement is going to 4 4 Nanyang Technological
go back to the culture of hostility that we had back in 2012 University Singapore
under Theresa May. Then most definitely, universities are 5 5 The University of Tokyo Japan
going to have to review where they’re... recruiting students 6 6 University of Hong Kong China
from and it will limit the growth of the UK’s sixth largest 8 7 Fudan University China
export.” 9 8 Zhejiang University China
Initial estimates based on provisional Home Office data 10 9 The Chinese University of
suggest that nearly 20 percent of total international enrol- Hong Kong China
ments could be at threat if these changes go ahead. 7 10 Shanghai Jiao Tong University China

THE ASIA UNIVERSITY RANKINGS
China varsities riding high to follow, albeit with arguably less success. India launched
It is a strategy that other Asian countries have attempted

HE STRENGTH OF CHINESE UNIVERSITIES con- the Institutes of Eminence (IoE) scheme in 2018, an excel-
tinues to grow, with 25 of the country’s institutions lence initiative that aimed to elevate a small group of public
Tachieving their best ever position in this year’s Times and private universities. But its future is doubtful.
Higher Education Asia University Rankings. Their stellar
performance is undeniable: Tsinghua University retained JAPAN
its place as Asia’s best university, followed by Peking Uni- Damaging subconscious prejudice
versity. In total, mainland Chinese institutions accounted
for five of Asia’s Top 10. OVER-REPRESENTATION OF IMAGES OF white
They are accompanied by Singapore’s National Universi- people on Japanese university websites suggests
ty of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological Univer- these institutions favour European and North
sity in third and fourth place respectively; The University American students — a trend that could damage the coun-
of Tokyo at #5; University of Hong Kong and The Chinese try’s attempts to attract more foreign students.
University of Hong Kong are ranked #6 and #9. In a new study published in Innovative Higher Educa-
Overall, the Top 10 remained mostly the same as last tion, academics used AI to identify the ethnicity of people
year, with only China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University fall- in 670,000 images scraped from roughly 1,000 Japanese
ing from #7 to #10, pushing up those in between. university websites that advertised campus internation-
Seoul National University (SNU), South Korea’s best alisation. It found white students were disproportionately
performing institution, came in at #15, down one place represented relative to their actual enrolment in Japan, ac-
from last year. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd counting for about 8 percent of faces on the websites while
University of Petroleum and Minerals is ranked #31, up their actual enrolment is less than 1 percent. The study au-
from #37 last year, while the United Arab Emirates’ Khalifa thors also found there were a quarter the number of images
University is #37, up from #40 in 2024. of black students compared with white ones, even though
This year’s rankings highlight how far China has come, enrolment levels are similar for both groups. Images of
spurred by the country’s Double First-Class initiative. This white students also outnumber South Asians, despite the
programme was launched in 2015, with 42 identified as latter having a “substantially larger” presence in Japanese
potential “world-class” universities. Since then, China has higher education.
poured 167 billion yuan (Rs.1.98 lakh crore) of funding into The researchers concluded that, as a result, Japanese
these institutions — investment that seems to be paying off. higher education “is likely to be subject to a white-centric
The Double First-Class initiative is the latest in a series perspective”, that could damage the country’s attempts
of policies aimed at strengthening a select group of Chinese to increase foreign student numbers, a key priority for
institutions. Before this current phase were the 211 and 985 policymakers as domestic enrolment in higher education
programmes, which stretch back to the 1990s. “Without dwindles. The government is aiming at attracting 400,000
such programmes, the China miracle in university manage- international students by 2033, and has offered scholar-
ment science would not have occurred,” says Simon Mar- ships, to encourage students from Africa to enrol in Japa-
ginson, professor of higher education at Oxford University. nese universities.

54 EDUCATIONWORLD JUNE 2025