Emerging Economies University Rankings 2022: glimpse into the future

Browse the THE Emerging Economies University Rankings 2022 results

The annual launch of our World University Rankings is our flagship event of the year; millions flock to our website to explore the data, while hundreds of articles are published by the world’s media.

Our Emerging Economies University Rankings attract less fanfare. But of all our rankings it provides a glimpse into the potential future landscape of higher education, revealing the developing systems that are making the most progress and challenging the established players (our Young University Rankings provide a similar insight at the institutional, rather than the system, level).

The Emerging ranking is, by its nature, a dynamic list. Many of the countries featured are undergoing periods of immense transformation economically, politically and socially and their universities are often at the forefront of this change.

One of these countries is India, which has huge ambitions to reform higher education under its National Education Policy. We explore the progress that has been made so far and what the future holds for the country’s universities in our analysis.

The results of the Emerging Economies University Rankings 2022 show that mainland China has reinforced its leading position, not only taking all five of the top positions, as was the case last year, but also 10 of the top 15 (up from eight). Peking University swaps places with Tsinghua University to claim the number one spot, after further increasing its lead on teaching environment and international outlook. (It is worth noting that the two universities are neck-and-neck in our World University Rankings owing to the different metric weightings in the two tables.)

But China is not the only system with a new top university. Strikingly, 10 other territories – Cyprus, Egypt, Ghana, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Serbia, South Africa and Vietnam – all have a new name leading their cohort of institutions this year, while in Tunisia and Bulgaria new institutions now share the national top spots with last year’s leaders.

Among those, University of Cape Coast makes its debut at joint 52nd to become Ghana’s highest-ranked institution ever, while Ton Duc Thang University enters straight into the top 100 at 82nd in just the third year that Vietnam has featured in the table. Latvia, Lithuania and Serbia also have newly ranked universities leading their countries this year.

Overall, 698 universities feature in the 2022 Emerging rankings, up from 606 last year. As a result, Russia has overtaken Brazil as the third most-represented nation in the ranking, with 60 institutions (up from 48), and Egypt and Pakistan have both leapfrogged Chile. Palestine and Tanzania feature in the ranking for the first time, with the former’s An-Najah National University joining the top 100 at joint 94th place.

Welcome to all of the newcomers. We look forward to monitoring your development and seeing what your future holds.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com

Countries/regions represented in the THE Emerging Economies University Rankings 2022