THE UNIVERSITY of Santo Tomas (UST) ranked third among Philippine institutions but saw a drop in its regional placement in the 2027 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings: Asia.
The University overtook De La Salle University (DLSU) for the third spot among Philippine universities after the Taft-based institution fell to 190th from 178th in the previous year.
UST dropped to 202nd in Asia from 184th previously but managed to increase its overall score from 53.5 to 54.1.
The University of the Philippines (UP) remained the country’s top institution, but it fell further outside the regional top 100, dropping from 104th to 123rd.
Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) retained its second spot among Philippine schools, but slipped to 151st from 141st in Asia.
UP and ADMU were the only institutions in the Philippines to place within the top 200 universities in Asia this year.
Mapúa University maintained its growth, improving its standing to 494th from 544th to secure the fifth spot among local schools.
To determine the placements, QS evaluates schools across eleven key metrics, including academic and employer reputation, faculty-to-student ratio, international research network and citations per paper.
UST maintained its dominance in global engagement locally, scoring a perfect 100 in outbound exchange and 99.4 in inbound exchange.
The Dominican-run institution also performed strongly in international faculty with a score of 87.5 and employer reputation with 86.7. It scored 56.4 and 45.1 in international research network and international students indicators, respectively.
However, UST recorded significantly lower scores across research-heavy and faculty indicators. The University scored 29.2 in faculty-student ratio and 12.5 in staff with doctorate degrees. For research and discovery, UST scored 57.5 in academic reputation, 15.9 in citations per paper and 3.8 in papers per faculty.
While the number of Philippine universities in the regional top 200 dropped from four to two, the country saw broader representation in the overall rankings.
A total of 45 Philippine higher education institutions made it to the 2027 Asian rankings, higher than the 35 local schools that made the cut last year.
The University of Hong Kong remained the top University in Asia. It was followed by Peking University and Tsinghua University. F
