Singapore and Malaysia lead South-east Asia pilot ranking

Universities in Singapore and Malaysia lead a pilot Times Higher Education ranking focused on South-east Asia, a rapidly advancing region in global higher education.

The National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore claim the top two places in the table, which analysed 195 higher education institutions from across the region using THE’s World University Rankings methodology.

The rest of the top 10 comprises seven Malaysian institutions, led by Universiti Teknologi Petronas in third place, and one in Brunei Darussalam: Universiti Brunei Darussalam in seventh place.

Thailand and Vietnam just miss out on a spot in the top 10 but are represented in the top 15 by Chulalongkorn University, UEH University and Mahidol University.

Indonesia’s flagship, the University of Indonesia, is ranked 22nd in the region, while the Philippines’ front runner, Ateneo de Manila University, is 28th.

Malaysia dominates the top 50, taking 18 spots in this group, while Indonesia is the most-represented country overall, with 35 ranked institutions. A recent report from THE’s consultancy team found that Indonesia was set to overtake the US and Brazil as the third largest higher education system in the world by student numbers within a decade.   

Singapore’s two leading universities, which are among the best in the world, not only the region, outperform their neighbours on most metrics. Earlier this year, the head of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore told THE how the institution was prioritising collaboration over competition with the National University of Singapore to help attract international researchers and improve student outcomes.

But Malaysia’s Lincoln University College is number one in South-east Asia in the international outlook pillar, which measures universities’ share of international students, staff and research publications. The institution ranks in the 61-70 band overall.

Malaysia is aiming to enrol 250,000 students from overseas by the end of the decade under its Education Development Plan.

The table is a filter of the THE World University Rankings 2026, including only the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean): Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The regional focus allows for more of these institutions to be given distinct ranks, and for more fine-grain bands lower down the table when compared with the global ranking, generating fresh insights on the Asean region for the first time.

The pilot ranking was created to offer a snapshot of what an official THE ranking of South-east Asian universities could look like. THE will consult on the future iteration, which is likely to have a lower publication threshold for entry, resulting in a higher number of ranked institutions.

Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Bristol, said that as a regional grouping Asean has been “highly successful”.

“The growth of per capita incomes, the expansion of participation in tertiary education and building of science have provided favourable conditions for closer practical cooperation and integration, encouraging student mobility, research collaboration and policy borrowing. This in turn has enhanced each individual higher education system,” he said.

Marginson added that a strength of the region is “broadly distributed capability”.

“Along with Singapore, where the two leading universities are at American levels of performance in research, Malaysia is a major player in international education and science, Thailand has long had a strong national system, and both Indonesia and Vietnam have made amazing progress in science. The Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar lack sufficient national investment but benefit from regional relationships.” 

Phil Baty, THE’s chief global affairs officer, said: “With such a huge and young population, and impressive economic growth, South-east Asia is one of the most dynamic and most closely watched regions of the world – and THE’s data shows very clearly that it is becoming an increasingly important global hub for higher education, research and innovation, with its universities making exciting strides up the world rankings.

“But the global focus of the rankings, and indeed, even an Asian focus, can obscure the exceptional pace of change specifically across the Asean bloc, and the success of key, individual universities. So we are really excited to focus our data, and the trusted world rankings performance metrics, to offer a closer, direct spotlight on the region.”

He added that although the pilot list is a simple filter of the World University Rankings, “we are planning a richer, deeper and more inclusive analysis in future iterations, and urge all ambitious, research-active universities in the region to get involved and share data with us”.

Overall, the pilot table includes 104 ranked universities from eight countries. It also includes a further 91 reporter institutions, which provided data but did not meet THE’s eligibility criteria to receive a global rank; however, these institutions may become eligible for a future edition of an Asean ranking if entry thresholds are lowered. The universities were assessed across all their core missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook – using 17 weighted metrics.

Top universities in South-east Asia: pilot ranking

THE considers the below table to be a consultative, pilot ranking for a future, official iteration of the South-east Asia University Rankings – allowing us to provide a more focused, contextual lens on the region, with more institutions included. Universities are currently eligible to rank in the World University Rankings if they publish 1,000 research papers over a five-year period (indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database) but future editions of the South-east Asia University Rankings are likely to lower this threshold for inclusion. Register your interest at profilerankings@timeshighereducation.com to ensure that you are included in the next edition of the South-east Asia University Rankings.

Note: Precise ranks and overall scores are shown for the institutions ranked in the top 50. We then display banded ranks and overall scores for institutions in the rest of the table because the difference between their scores is not statistically significant. Precise pillar scores are displayed for each ranked institution.

Institutions that are ranked within bands are listed in alphabetical order. All the universities ranked within the same band have the same position. For instance, if the top two universities in country A are ranked in the same band (51-60), they are both ranked joint first in Country A.