China overtakes U.S for world’s ‘best’universities: Report

Published: November 02,2022

By Staff writer

China has surpassed U.S in the ranking of the world’s best universities according to a recent report by U.S. News & World Report. Results were reported in the media outlet’s “Best Global Universities Rankings” released Tuesday. According to the report, out of the2,000 schools from more than 90 countries ranked by U.S. News & World Report, 338 Chinese universities made the list, compared to 280 American universities. This is the first time that Chinese universities have outnumbers those in the U.S. 

The ranking of universities in the world are based on a number of considerations, which include; research reputation, publications, conferences and citations. The report mentions that Artificial intelligence is among the few fields that both the U.S. and China regard as a strategic national priority.

Among the top ten universities in Asia,  Tsinghua University (China) is ranked number one, followed by Peking University (China) in fourth position,  while Shanghai Jiao Tong University  and Zhejiang University follow in position nine and ten respectively. However, U.S and UK universities still rank the best top ten in the world, with Harvard University taking the lead, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California–Berkeley, and UK’s University of Oxford comes in fifth place. 

Improvement of education, science and technology is one area where the Chinese government has invested significant resources in the past decade. China is also attracting its techno savvy talents abroad to return home and provide training to local talents. For this to happen, China created a new immigration office to handle the returning scientists. 

The good quality of Chinese universities has attracted many students from African countries and around the world. The Chinese government has also provided scholarships to students from countries around the world to benefit from their advanced education system.  As a result, China now has the largest number of African international students in the world, more than traditional study abroad destinations like the US or UK.

For African students, education in China is attractive for the quality of its programmes and its relative affordability compared to the world’s other major education hubs.

At the closing of the 20^th CPC National Congress recently, Xi Jinping who is the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, and also the Chairman of the CPC Central committee, said that, “the Communist Party of China (CPC) is fully confident and capable of creating new and even greater miracles on the new journey of the new era.” Indeed some of these miracles are already beginning to blossom.