The Trending 2018 Global Regional Rankings of the Top 5 Universities

The 2018 Global Regional Rankings of the Top 5 Universities are:

Africa

1. University of Cape Town – South Africa

2. University of the Witwatersrand – South Africa

3. Stellenbosch University – South Africa

4. University of KwaZulu-Natal – South Africa

5. Cairo University – Egypt

Asia

1. The University of Tokyo, Japan

2. Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (NTU)

3. National University of Singapore, Singapore

4. Tsinghua University -China

5. Peking University – China

Caribbean

1. Universidad de la Habana – Cuba

2. University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez – Puerto Rico

3. Universidad de Puerto Rico – Puerto Rico

4. University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras – Puerto Rico

5. University of the West Indies – Jamaica

Central America

1. Universidad de Costa Rico – Costa Rico

2. Universidad Nacional- Costa Rico

3. Universidad Latinoamericana de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Costa Rica

4. Universidad Rafael Landívar – Guatemala

5. Universidad de El Salvador – El Salvador

Europe

1. University of Cambridge, UK

2. University of Oxford, UK

3. UCL (University College London), UK

4. Imperial College London, UK

5. ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland

Oceania

1. The University of Melbourne – Australia
2. The University of Sydney – Australia
3. The Australian National University – Australia
4. The University of Queensland – Australia
5. The University of New South Wales – Australia

North America

1. Harvard University, USA

2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA

3. Stanford University, USA

4. Princeton University, USA

5. California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA

South America

1. Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo – Brazil

2. Universidad Federal do Rio de Janeiro – Brazil

3. Universidad de Buenos Aires – Argentina

4. Pontificia Universidad Catoilca de Chile

5. Universidade Estadual de Campinas – Brazil

Please feel free to comment on our selections and make a recommendation, if you are or have attended any of these universities. You can PMs us, at our Twitter or Facebook accounts.

You can also see, The World Top 20 Graduate School Rankings at The World College Information Center

You can find the Countries that offer free college education and the tools you need to help prepare you for College at the College Resource Center.

How Universities Are Ranked – The Methodology

Two primary level indicators – Economics and Social Affairs, were used to rank the universities in categories. Then 7 criteria – Innovation; Research; Publications; Facilities; Teaching; Employability; and Social Responsibility, were used to measure each university’s strengthens within the two primary indicators.

Below is the methodology indicator’s criteria scoring scale system:

Economic Indicators

1. Innovation (60%): Innovation, the output of the universities activities and findings to economy, society and culture, in agriculture, healthcare, financial and communication services, and its help in sustaining innovations (which supplant older products with revolutionary and more superior ones) and efficiency designs (which permit companies to build and sell established products for less) help companies serve their existing customers better, that drives economic growth.

2. Research (30%): This category criteria looks, at the university’s global and regional academic reputation for research excellence amongst they’re peers. The aggregate number of citations per paper represents the overall impact of the research by the university in industries publications. And finally, the role of universities in disseminating brand-new knowledge and ideas in the global research community.

3. Publications (10%): This criteria is based on the overall number of scholarly papers (reviews, articles and notes) that contain affiliations to a university and are published in high-quality, impactful journals. This is also influenced by the amount of papers that have been assigned as being in the top 10 percent of the most highly cited papers in the world for their respective fields. As the quantity of highly cited papers is compared with similar papers (same publication year, subject and document type), that can be considered a robust indication of how much excellent research the university produces.

Social Affairs Indicators

4. Facilities (15%): A University’s learning and living environment, and infrastructure are a key indicator for students to know what to expect from their university experience. Factors such as housing, IT, library and career development facilities, in addition to the number of students’ societies were considered within this criterion. This category is studied to offer a definite sense of the learning environment of each institution from both the student and the academic perspective.

5. Teaching (30%): A University’s quality of faculty is a major role of its ability to attract and nurture tomorrow’s finest minds, and inspire the next generation of potential research academics. This indicator measured the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, medals, and student teaching quality assessment data feedback, in addition to, study rate and student faculty ratio.

6. Employability (40%): The most important indicator of a university’s success is its ability to help industry with innovations, inventions and a work-ready graduated workforce. That can be measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have the ability to work effectively in a multi-cultural environment, to deliver presentations, to manage people and projects, and ultimately hold CEO positions internationally, nationally and locally. The data to access these results were gathered from surveys of employers, graduate employment rates and careers service support.

7. Social Responsibility (15%): Effective indicators are the number of obligations a university organizes and takes to society by investing in the local community as well as in charity work and disaster relief. We also examine the inclusiveness of the university to students, especially at scholarships and bursaries, disability access, gender balance and low-income outreach, and the university’s engagement in environmental awareness and its regional human capital development.

The Scoring Point System

To calculate each university’s score, two tables were created for both indicators – Economic and Social Affairs-will their criteria base score being tallied from a scale set of five values: 5-Excellent, 4- Very Good, 3-Good, 2-Average and 1-Poor.

Each criteria value point is given a score based on data collected by our research team, and then calculated for a mean average for the indicator, and then combined with the second indicator to arrive at total, which is divided for the final average score.

Data Collection

Statistical data were collected from Institutions database and educational publications for use in the criteria value scores.

The results from each universities score were then matched with the results from the world’s top 4 international higher education survey rankings – US News & World Report (Best Global Universities), The Times Higher Education (World Reputation Rankings), QS Top Universities (World University Rankings), and Center for World University Rankings, to selected this year’s final 20 universities.