New Asian universities outranking young Western universities. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/education/new-universities-in-asia-outranking-young-colleges-in-the-west.html?ref=education&_r=0
Another "miss world" for universities. I akin Singapore's universities raise in rankings as how northeastern did it. They just gamed the whole silly system.
The list in question is intended to show the "Top 50" universities worldwide that are under 50 years old. There are only two US schools on the list: the University of California at Irvine, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. And they were both established in 1965, so they will both be 50 years old next year, and presumably will no longer qualify for the list. So there may not be any US schools on this list in the future (although it seems likely that the University of California at Merced, est. 2005, will appear at some point). The absence of US schools reflects the fact that the US states generally finished expanding their top public university systems in the 1960s. The most noteworthy development in US higher education since then has been the rise of large for-profit universities -- but such schools don't score highly on ranking systems based on selectivity or research quality.
There is only one Singapore school on the list, which is Nanyang Technological University, est. 1991. NTU is currently #1 on this list, which may or may not be meaningful. However, there is no doubt that NTU is currently one of the top schools in Asia, and certainly one of the top 50 schools established worldwide since 1964.
I'm not sure how meaningful this would be to the rest of the world (being 1st). Would it be meaningful say in the US ? Wife is getting set up to apply into medical schools and the better ones won't accept an NTU degree (she graduated from there with first class). I guess it's subjective to how companies want to look at this 'rankings'. End of the day, the purpose of a first degree is to find employment or higher education, but if it's that hard to get accepted, kinda defeats whatever ranking a Uni may or may not have.
There is no university ranking system anywhere that has any legal meaning in the US. I expect an NTU degree would work very well for purposes of employment or higher education in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. In the US -- which is thousands of miles away, and which has a different educational system -- it may not have the same value (regardless of its QS World University ranking). The same would be true for any other degree from Asia, Africa, South America, and many countries in Europe. The primary purpose of the QS World University rankings is to make money for Quacquarelli Symonds (a British company). In the same way, the primary purpose of the US News & World Report rankings is to make money for U.S. News & World Report, L.P. There is no assurance that the rankings will do anything beyond that. But the reality is that people do pay attention to these rankings (which is why they make money). And in the long run, high rankings do tend to translate to more applicants and more prestige (which is why schools like Northeastern try so hard to game them). Possibly your wife has obtained a foreign degree evaluation from a credentials service. It's likely that those services are aware of rankings, and that high rankings have a positive effect on their evaluations.
I never have praise for rankings, but one where one of the criteria is that the university is less than fifty years old is especially arbitrary and useless. How many students are going to have this as one of their selection criteria?
None, but in fairness, the primary QS rankings don't consider this factor. After they complete their primary ranking, they just extract the the youngest schools and offer it as a separate list, presumably as a possible indicator of "up and coming" institutions to those who might be interested. USN&WR has a similar ranking of "up and coming" schools in the US. It may not matter to the student whether or not an institution happens to be "up and coming". However, lists of "up and coming" schools tend to drive interest and discussion, and therefore to improve sales of the rankings.
I would be interested to know if a school is up and coming. Some schools haven't been around long enough to make it to the top, but they could be offering quality programs. Currently, there are several schools in Texas that are competing to become the next tier 1 university in the state. They may not be ranked high now, but at least potential graduate students know that these schools are taking research seriously.
