(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) No university from Oman features in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings 2015. Released last week the rankings show that the only two GCC varsities in the Asia 100 are from Saudi Arabia.
China has overtaken Japan as Asia's number one nation for producing top universities. While Japan's University of Tokyo tops the list the country has lost ground overall with the balance of power now shifting towards China.
Japan has 19 universities in the top 100 down from 20 last year and 22 in 2013. Fifteen of these have slipped down the list by an average of 5.8 places.
By contrast China now has 21 institutions up from 18 last year and 15 in 2013 and many of these are rising stars including Peking University (fourth) and Tsinghua University (fifth) which have both moved up a place.
Wuhan University has also climbed an impressive 15 places to be at joint 49th along with University of Seoul and Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University.
From the region Turkey leads with six institutions out of which four are in the top 21; Iran has three while Saudi Arabia's King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals is placed 71st and King Saud University at 72nd.
China's special administrative regions (SARs) are also performing well with all six of Hong Kong's ranked universities in the top 50. Macau has made its debut in the list with the University of Macau on the 40th spot.
The shift in power towards China takes place against a backdrop of investments in research and development while Japan wrestles with cuts as a result of its crippling level of public debt.
Gerard Postiglione director of the Wah Ching Centre of Research on Education in China at the University of Hong Kong said that Japan's declining performance is due to a combination of 'a lot of inbreeding' at its universities (graduates teaching at the same university at which they studied) research funding being concentrated at its top tier institutions and fewer promotion opportunities for young academics. '[China] started from scratch and rose quickly from the 1990s when it didn't have world-class universities whereas Japan was already at a pretty high level so its productivity has levelled off for a few years' he said.
Phil Baty THE rankings editor added 'Now is not the time for [Japan] to rest on existing reputation - it must act and quickly if it is to arrest its decline.'
Taiwan's performance is continuing to decline - six universities have fallen out of the top 100 since the rankings' first year in 2013 while India's progress has faltered with the majority of its institutions losing ground.
Indian Institute of Science Bangalore comes closest at 37th place and Punjab University at 38th position down six places from 2014 according to a statement issued by the ranking body.
'India's progress has faltered it has nine top 100 universities one fewer than last year' added the statement from THE. The IITs of Roorkee Bombay Delhi Kharagpur and Madras besides Aligarh Muslim University and Jawaharlal Nehru University figure among the top 100 though their rankings have come down from 2014.
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