THE UNIVERSITY of Santo Tomas moved up to second-best among Philippine institutions after posting improvements in most of its performance indicators in the 2025 Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings.
Despite retaining its regional ranking of 601+ in the latest results of the assessment, UST improved from third spot last year to second place, sharing the same slot with three other institutions.
It also posted an overall score of 13.6-28.2 from the 14.7-24.0 it received during the debut of the assessment last year.
Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines were tied
as the top institutions in the country, both ranking within the 501-600 band.
They were followed by UST, De La Salle University, Mapua University and newly-ranked Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology at 601+.
Ateneo de Manila University was also the leading higher education institution in the country last year, with the University of the Philippines and De La Salle tying for second place, and Mapúa University and UST placing third.
The institutions were assessed based on research quality (30%), research environment (28%) and teaching (24.5%). Other indicators were industry (10%), which determines an institution’s contribution to community innovations; and international outlook (7.5%), which measures a university’s international students, staff and research collaboration.
How UST fared
International outlook was still the highest-rated indicator of the University although its score fell to 64.4 from 67 in the previous year.
Research quality drew the highest improvement for UST at 26.9 from 21.3, while slight improvements were seen in the University’s research environment (11.7 from 11.5) and teaching (23.6 from 23.4). UST’s score in the industry dipped to 20.4 from 20.7.
Now in its 13th edition, THE Asia University Rankings uses the same performance indicators of THE’s World University Rankings but are adjusted to “reflect the attributes of Asia’s institutions.”
In a statement, THE chief global affairs officer Phil Baty lauded Asian universities for improving their visibility through different research efforts in the region.
“Overall, we can see Asian higher education and research characterised by a wonderful diversity of excellence, with strong results in the East, in Singapore, South Korea and Japan in particular, and with growing visibility and success in the rankings for South-east Asian nations too, notably Malaysia,” Baty said.
China dominated the rankings after securing five spots in the top 10. Tsinghua University and Peking University, both from the East Asian country, remained at first and second place, respectively. They were followed by the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, the University of Tokyo, University of Hong Kong, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
This year, a total of 853 universities were ranked across 35 countries, up from last year’s 739 universities.
The Times Higher Education assesses the performance of research-intensive universities based on their teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. F
