China continues to catch up to the U.S. in higher education

China may be poised to catch up with the United States in terms of higher education quality, according to The Times Higher Education’s 2023 university rankings.

According to an Oct. 12 article on its website unpacking the results, the U.S. is “waning” in “research supremacy.” The article partially attributes this change to “a growing gap in output between elite universities and the rest.” 

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Rankings are established based 30% on teaching, defined as “the learning environment”; 30% on research, defined as “volume, income and reputation” of research; 30% on citations, defined as “research influence”; 7.5% on international outlook, defined as the demographics of “staff, students, and research”; and 2.5% on industry income, defined as “knowledge transfer.”

While U.S. scores remained consistently higher than China’s, the U.S. has seen significant decreases while China has seen significant increases. 

For example, China’s “citations” score rose from 55.6 to 58 over the past year, while the U.S.’s score in the same category fell from 70.0 to 69.4.

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Additionally, while average overall scores for both the United States and China increased, the U.S. saw an increase of only 0.1 points while China’s score increased by 1.6 points.

Despite the rising competition from China, however, the U.S. still boasts 7 of the top 10 universities in the world, according to The Times Higher Education rankings. By contrast, no Chinese university appears in the top 10.

Campus Reform has reached out to all institutions mentioned for comment and will update accordingly.