Browse the latest results of the Times Higher Education Sustainability Impact Ratings
South-east Asian universities have played an outsized role in Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings ever since their 2019 inception. This year is no exception, with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) region providing 352 of the 1,650-odd entrants in the 2026 Sustainability Impact Ratings.
Over 300, some 20 per cent, were in Asean’s most populous countries – Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand – which, by way of comparison, provided 4 per cent of the institutions listed in THE’s latest World University Rankings (WUR). Twenty-five Asean universities made the top 200 of the overall impact ranking, compared with none in the WUR.
The Philippines was better represented than any other nation, with 160 universities earning overall positions in the 2026 Sustainability Impact Ratings. By comparison, 48 Filipino institutions submitted data for the latest WUR and only six met the criteria for ranking, which include at least 1,000 refereed journal articles over five years.
Political scientist Alma Maria Salvador said many Filipino universities lacked the research output and “robust” quality assurance processes needed to achieve WUR ranking – although many entered anyway “for international benchmarking purposes”. But the absence of a “large research threshold” gave them an opportunity to “make our presence felt” in the impact ratings, which also played to their community service strengths.
