T

he University of Indonesia (UI) once again leads the nation in the list of the most influential universities in emerging-economy countries, as the university is included in the top-100 in a ranking released by Times Higher Education (THE), the magazine behind the world’s most influential university rankings.

The university leaps into the top 100, climbing from 184th position in last year’s chart to 82nd rank — a position shared with the Beijing Institute of Technology in China — in the 2019 THE Emerging Economies Rankings. The ranking, launched on Wednesday, includes nearly 450 universities, an increase from 378 last year, located in 43 countries across four continents.

In total, five Indonesian universities are included in the ranking, with the Bandung Institute of Technology in West Java climbing 27 places to a shared 146th position with the Nanjing Agricultural University in China. The other Indonesian universities are the Bogor Agricultural University in West Java, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta as well as the 10 November Institute of Technology in Surabaya, East Java.

In order to provide the most comprehensive, balanced and trustworthy comparisons for the universities, THE uses carefully calibrated performance indicators that are grouped into five areas.

The first area is teaching, which includes learning environment. Next is research, comprising its volume, income and reputation. The third area is citations, which takes into account research influence. Fourth is international outlook, which covers staff, students and research. And finally, the fifth area is industry income, in which knowledge transfer is evaluated.

“[UI’s] rapid rise comes thanks to improvements to its teaching, research and international outlook scores — as well as a very strong rise this year in its industry income score,” the magazine wrote in a statement.

The magazine also noted significant increases in universities among Southeast Asian nations, with the University of Malaya claiming the highest regional position in 18th rank. Meanwhile, China dominates the 2019 ranking with 72 institutions, four of which claim the top-five positions.

Previously, in October, UI became the only Indonesian university to enter the 2019 THE World University Rankings, as the university was ranked in the range of 601-800 in the world -- an improvement on its 2018 ranking when it was in the 801-1000 bracket.

Education expert Doni Koesoema said that UI climbed up in position because of its internal research publication policy and its education outlook.

“The university required its lecturers and professors to publish their research on the Scopus index, which helped a lot to increase their academic reputation,” he said.

According to Doni, the Times Higher Education grading system used UI’s successful promotion for international students as one of the parameters to increase its rating.

“However, there were many international students who came to Indonesia only to take some courses and research, but they did not come here to receive their degrees. In my opinion, I think universities should be considered top quality if they could motivate foreign students to get their degrees there,” he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

“So in conclusion, this ranking system does not reflect an increase of quality in our higher education system in general since the indicators are not related to education qualities,” Doni added.