Browse the full list of institutions in this year¡¯s rankings
Kyoto University and The University of Tokyo have jointly topped the Times Higher Education Japan University Rankings 2018.
Kyoto has jumped from third to joint first place to join Tokyo, which topped the first edition of the student-focused rankings last year.?Kyoto¡¯s rise comes at the expense of Tohoku University, which has dropped from second to third place in the table.
Kyoto¡¯s performance under the environment pillar of the methodology improved this year. This includes metrics on the share of international students and staff at each institution as well as two new indicators: the number of students in international exchange programmes, and the number of courses taught in a language other than Japanese.
The university also achieved slightly higher scores for outcomes, which measures academic and employer reputation, and resources, which looks at income, staff-to-student ratio, research output, research grants and the national mock university exam scores received by institutions¡¯ entrants.
Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â
Japan¡¯s four other National Seven Universities ¨C Nagoya University, Osaka University, Kyushu University and Hokkaido University ¨C also feature at the top of the table between fifth and eighth place. The?Tokyo Institute of Technology is again the only institution outside this elite group to make the top eight, in fourth place.
Keio University is the country¡¯s top private university and the only private institution to make the top 10 of the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â Japan University Rankings, which is produced in partnership with Japanese education company Benesse.
Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â
The University of Tokyo achieves the highest score in the resources and outcomes pillars of the rankings.?Meanwhile, Akita International University tops the environment pillar and also comes first for engagement, which measures the quality of university teaching through a survey of student career advisers.
ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com
Top 10 institutions in the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â Japan University Rankings
| Rank | Institution | Prefecture |
| =1 | Kyoto University | Kyoto |
| =1 | The University of Tokyo | Tokyo |
| 3 | Tohoku University | Miyagi |
| 4 | Tokyo Institute of Technology | Tokyo |
| 5 | Kyushu University | Fukuoka |
| 6 | Hokkaido University | Hokkaido |
| 7 | Nagoya University | Aichi |
| 8 | Osaka University | Osaka |
| 9 | University of Tsukuba | Ibaraki |
| 10 | Keio University | Tokyo |
View the full results of the Times Higher Education Japan University Rankings 2018
Trading on reputations
Is the quality of teaching in Japan¡¯s top universities on a par with that of their research?
Do ¡°top¡± universities provide the best teaching? That question has long been moot, given the extent to which institutional reputation is formed by research performance. The sometimes surprising results of the UK¡¯s teaching excellence framework last year suggest that the connection between a high-ranking university and a good student experience is certainly not guaranteed.
In Japan, the question is particularly subject to debate given the country¡¯s unfortunate international reputation for discouraging critical thinking and creativity in its education system. Few data exist on teaching quality in Japanese universities, but the Times Higher Education Japan University Rankings, launched last year and repeated this year, provide some insights.
Search for university jobs in Japan and throughout Asia
The ranking is modelled on the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education US College Rankings, which were first published in 2016. Overall scores are constructed on the basis of the same four ¡°pillars¡± ¨C resources, engagement, outcomes and environment; see our methodology ¨C all of which focus primarily on what institutions offer students. In that respect, the rankings differ considerably from Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁϿ⡯s World University Rankings, which are primarily informed by research data.
Top 20 institutions for environment
Top 20 institutions for outcomes
| Rank on outcomes pillar | Rank in overall Japan University Rankings 2018 | Institution | Score on outcomes pillar |
| 1 | =1 | The University of Tokyo | 98.9 |
| 2 | =1 | Kyoto University | 98.6 |
| 3 | 5 | Kyushu University | 97.7 |
| 4 | 10 | Keio University | 97.2 |
| =5 | 7 | Nagoya University | 95.6 |
| =5 | 3 | Tohoku University | 95.6 |
| 7 | 8 | Osaka University | 95.4 |
| 8 | 6 | Hokkaido University | 94.8 |
| 9 | 4 | Tokyo Institute of Technology | 94.7 |
| 10 | 11 | Waseda University | 93.8 |
| 11 | 14 | Hitotsubashi University | 89.1 |
| 12 | 9 | University of Tsukuba | 88.1 |
| 13 | 13 | Hiroshima University | 76.6 |
| 14 | 30 | Tokyo University of Science | 73.2 |
| 15 | =25 | Yokohama National University | 72.9 |
| 16 | 19 | Chiba University | 72 |
| 17 | 12 | Akita International University | 70.6 |
| 18 | 29 | Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology | 69.6 |
| 19 | 15 | Sophia University | 69.4 |
| 20 | 18 | Kobe University | 69.3 |
At first glance, comparing the two rankings suggests that Japan¡¯s performance in teaching is not vastly different from its performance in research. The Japan rankings are headed by The University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, which are also Japan¡¯s highest-ranked representatives in the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â World University Rankings, at numbers 46 and joint 74th, respectively. Third is Tohoku University, which is Japan¡¯s joint-third highest representative in the world rankings. And the country¡¯s fifth in the world rankings, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is fourth in the Japan rankings, produced in partnership with Japanese education company Benesse.
Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â
However, in preparing this year¡¯s rankings, Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â also directly surveyed undergraduates at Japanese institutions about teaching at their universities. The survey ¨C which was carried out on a trial basis and does not feed into the main rankings this year ¨C assesses opportunities for interacting with faculty, as well as the extent to which teaching challenges students, enhances their critical thinking and helps them see connections between different aspects of their courses and apply their learning to the real world. It also examines whether universities seek suggestions for improvements from students and act on them, and whether students would recommend their institutions to family and friends.
The results of the survey will be published later this year, but an early look at the data suggests that Japanese students are critical of the quality of their teaching. It also reveals that some of Japan¡¯s top institutions fall down when it comes to many aspects of teaching. Tokyo and Kyoto, for example, are the worst institutions out of the 87 surveyed at supporting students to apply their knowledge to the real world.
See our methodology for the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ¿â Japan University Rankings 2018
In fact, all of Japan¡¯s top 10 universities overall perform particularly badly on this aspect of teaching. The institutions highly ranked in the main rankings also score poorly on the extent to which they challenge students, foster a sense of community and provide students with opportunities to interact with faculty.
Among the country¡¯s elite, the University of Tsukuba stands out as offering the best-quality teaching across all the metrics in the student experience survey. It is the only institution highly ranked in the main survey to break into the top 25, when the results of the survey are amalgamated into a ranking. And it scores particularly well compared with its top 10 peers for student interaction with faculty, the challenging nature of its teaching and the support that it gives students to reflect on or make connections between educational content.
Tokyo and Hokkaido University are the only other institutions highly placed in the Japan rankings to come anywhere near the top on specific aspects of the student experience, with both scoring above average on developing critical thinking.
By contrast, Japan¡¯s international universities, which teach many of their courses in English, perform strongly in the survey. Akita International University (12th in the main Japan rankings), the International Christian University (16th) and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University?(joint 21st) do particularly well in areas such as communication between staff and students. This may partly be explained by the nature of such institutions, which work to prepare students for a global marketplace that is competitive, and value skills such as critical thinking.
By contrast, the local job market in Japan is more focused on the reputation of the universities that graduates attended than on the skills or knowledge that they gained there. This may explain why, for all their apparent failings in teaching quality, students at the highest-ranked universities still typically say that they would recommend them to others. Tokyo, Kyoto and Tohoku have some of the biggest disparities between the perceived quality of their teaching and their students¡¯ likelihood to recommend them.
Simon Marginson, professor of international higher education at the UCL Institute of Education, says that such a phenomenon is not uncommon in countries with competitive and hierarchical higher education systems. ¡°Student choice has never been primarily driven by actual or perceived teaching quality, learning achievement or satisfaction with services or facilities,¡± he says. Instead, the status of the university and degree course and the sense of how the programme leads to a career are more important.
Marginson is ¡°wary of playing into¡± the narrative that Japanese universities are poor at teaching critical thinking, noting that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development¡¯s Pisa ranking of school-level education shows that East Asian countries do ¡