Seoul National University(SNU), Sungkyunkwan University(SKKU), Hanyang University, Yonsei University, Korea University took the no.1 to no. 5th spot of the JoongAng Daily University Rankings for 2015.  In the assessment of broad fields of study and specific studies and departments, SNU marked the top for both the fields of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences while POSTECH placed itself on top in the fields of Engineering and Natural Sciences.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, JoongAng Daily conducted separate evaluations of 4 year comprehensive universities which taught 4 or more broad fields of study in the areas of Liberal Arts, Social Sciences, Engineering, Natural Sciences, Medical Science, Art, Music and Physical education (Overall Evaluation), and respective fields of study evaluations. The assessment is intended to reveal the general competitiveness of the universities and in the same time precipitate specialization of the individual fields of study. New indexes on ‘Publication & translation (Liberal arts & Social sciences), university-industry collaboration (Engineering) has been created and added. In the Overall Evaluation SNU marked no.1 out of the 80 university in faculty publication & translation quality (citation), domestic journal publication quality. International journal publication quality was 4th. SKKU was recognized for its research investment, findings and commercialization of technology.

Hanyang Univ. stood out with its entrepreneurship education. Last year more than half (56.6% no.1) of all attending students took the entrepreneurship course provided by the school. Presently it had the most number of attending or graduated students (534 people) that were heading high tech venture firms. Hanyang University’s ascent in this year’s ranking are greatly accredited to the number of startups and university-industry collaboration (Tech transfer income per faculty, 3rd)

Yonsei University showed the highest scores in ‘Maintaining employment rate’ (more than 6 months employment) which indicates the quality of employment, while Korea Univ. had the most number of exchange students with Attending International Student (3234 people), Outbound Student (2056 people). Universities with collaboration in joint research with companies stood out the most. Sogang University who took 6th place was very active in collaborative research with companies and joint venture startups. Even with the smallest in field of Engineering, the tech transfer income was the most highest.

Link to media report: http://news.joins.com/article/18892040