“THE World University Rankings” of Pusan National University (PNU) has fallen again in only two years.

According to the "2023 THE World University Rankings,” announced in October 2022, PNU ranked 1,001-1,200th among 1,799 universities in the world (37 universities in Korea). It is 200 places lower than its previous 801-1,000th, as evaluated two years ago, and 400 places lower than 601-800th, as assessed in 2018 and 2019. PNU ranked 19th among domestic universities, the same as last year, but it fell by 1~3 places from 18th in 2021 and 16th in 2018 and 2019. It is similar to the decline in PNU’s “QS World University Rankings,” which was reported by “Channel PNU” on May 23rd.

“World University Rankings” is an annual evaluation conducted by “Times Higher Education (THE),” a British university evaluation agency, for universities in the world. It is considered one of the top three World University Rankings indicators along with the UK's “QS World University Ranking” and China's “ARWU University Ranking.” Focusing on evaluating research and educational conditions, THE determines the ranking by five criteria:

educational conditions (Teaching), research performance (Research), paper citations (Citations), internationalization (International Outlook), and industry-university cooperation income (Industry Income). It emphasizes research and educational conditions, unlike QS, which is a reputation-oriented evaluation.

Looking at the scores of each criterion of PNU, “Research” and “Industry Income” showed an upward trend, but the others fell. In particular, “Citations (21.6 points)” was less than half of the average score (54.2 points). As a result, PNU’s total score (28.8 points) was about 18 points lower than the average score (47.4 points) of the top 18 domestic universities.

The Office of Planning and Evaluation of PNU diagnosed three significant reasons for the decline in the World University Rankings. The first reason is the drop in the “Teaching” score due to a reduction in the “Bachelor-Ph.D. recipients” ratio and “faculty- Ph.D. recipients” ratio, as the number of Ph.D. recipients decreased by 15% compared to the previous year. The second is the decrease in the “Impact Factor (FWCI),” an indicator that measures the influence of academic journals compared to the previous year. The third is that the “International Outlook” indicator, such as the ratio of foreign professors and foreign students, has improved, but the relative competitiveness has weakened.

PNU announced that it is striving to set core tasks in four areas (increase in research capabilities, rise in reputation, improvement of educational conditions, and internationalization) and become a world-class research-oriented university to overcome the decline in the “World University Rankings.” Improving the educational conditions is representative; Implementation of an incentive support project for publishing excellent papers, an increase in paper citation counts through the global promotion of excellent research performance, an increase in research capabilities such as the development of a “Researcher ID” management system, a rise in the ratio of full-time faculty, and enhancement of educational conditions like training excellent PhD-level researchers, and so on.

Lee Kyeong-eun, the Director of the Evaluation Team in the Office of Planning and Evaluation of PNU, said, “We are promoting research qualitative performance-oriented projects like the establishment of the ‘PNU Hanmaeum Prize.' We expect this project to increase the paper citation counts of PNU, and we are constantly discussing countermeasures by organizing an international evaluation strategy Task Force.”

Reporter Kim Hyeon-Hee

Translated by Kwon Eun-Ji