Miserable Rankings Of Sri Lanka’s “Top Universities”

Sri Lanka’s so-called ‘top universities’ have fared miserably in the latest survey of ranked Universities in the world according to the internationally recognized Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Asian University Rankings for 2018.

The University of Colombo is ranked as 156, just one ranking higher than the little known Beijing Foreign Studies University. It has slipped even lower than the University of Dhaka at 124^th place according to the rankings. The University of Colombo at one time offered honorary doctorates to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Colombo Telegraph learns that Former Minister of Justice Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe’s doctorate in law was approved by the University Higher Degrees Committee despite numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes in the thesis.

Meanwhile the University of Peradeniya is ranked even lower, at 242^nd place.

The QS ranking lists over 400 universities. It assesses universities looking at 10 primary indicators, including academic and employer reputation, the proportion of PhD qualified academic staff, and the proportion of inbound and outbound exchange students at the university. The list is topped by the US based universities, MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Caltech respectively. The UK’s Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, University College, London (UCL) and Imperial College, London, are placed at 5, 6^th, 7^th and 8^th places respectively.Â

The Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) is placed at 11^th place and is the highest ranked from Asian Universities.   Â