Skyrocketing Success: City University of Hong Kong Claims Triple Victory in QS 2025 Asian University Rankings

City University of Hong Kong (CityU), with its excellent teaching and research standards and internationally diverse academic environment, won three awards at the first Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Asian University Rankings Awards Ceremony, including the “International Expansion Award”, “Learning Experience Award”, and “Research Discovery Award”. CityU also became the university that won the most awards at this award ceremony.

In the recently released QS 2025 Asian University Rankings, CityU ranked tenth in Asia, jumping seven places from last year and becoming the top 1% of universities in Asia. CityU also ranks third in Hong Kong, with impressive results. This award demonstrates CityU’s fruitful achievements in promoting international cooperation and promoting innovative teaching and research.

The awards ceremony was held in Macau on November 7 and is one of the major events of the QS Asia Pacific Higher Education Summit 2024. CityU stood out among 984 shortlisted institutions and won three awards, becoming the only university in Asia to win all three categories and the most awards.

President of City UniversityProfessor Mei YanchangSaid: “CityU has ranked among the top ten in the QS Asia University Rankings 2025 and has won three awards, which is exciting. These achievements fully reflect the continuous improvement of CityU’s teaching and research standards and its leading position in Asia. This year is a good time for CityU to celebrate. As the university celebrates its 30th anniversary, CityU will continue to promote inspiring, interactive and innovative education, actively expand global connections, and lead the university’s teachers and students into the future through innovation.”

CityU won three awards, becoming the only university in Asia to win all three categories and the most awards.

The International Expansion Award recognizes institutions with outstanding performance in developing international academic environments and research networks. CityU ranks first in Asia in three evaluation indicators, including “ratio of international teachers”, “ratio of inbound exchange students” and “ratio of outbound exchange students”, and also achieved full marks in the “ratio of international students”.

CityU strives to establish cooperative relationships with well-known universities and institutions around the world, including the Mainland and the Belt and Road Initiative, to promote academic and scientific research collaboration and provide opportunities for teachers and students from many countries or regions around the world to explore the world. Among them, CityU has launched a series of cooperation with the University of Cambridge this year, including with the Lucy University of Cambridge. Cavendish College launches its first scholarship scheme with a local university. At the same time, CityU also became Lucy. The world’s first international partner school of Cavendish College’s “Future Global Leaders Program” has the common goal of cultivating future global leaders. Currently, CityU has more than 400 exchange student program partners, covering more than 44 countries or regions around the world, and about 65% of undergraduate students participate in exchange programs.

The “Learning Experience Award” recognizes institutions with excellent teaching quality, using “teacher-student ratio” and “number of teachers with doctoral degrees” as evaluation indicators. Among them, CityU’s performance in the “teacher-student ratio” has improved significantly, rising 20 places in the ranking, reflecting that CityU continues to improve its teaching quality and provide students with sufficient academic support. City University’s commitment to promoting high-quality innovative education has recently been recognized by the Quality Assurance Bureau of the University Grants Committee in the “City University of Hong Kong Quality Assurance Report”. In order to recognize outstanding teachers and promote best teaching practices, City University established the Outstanding Teaching Award in 1993, becoming the first local university to set up similar awards.

The “Research Discovery Award” recognizes institutions with outstanding performance in academic research. The evaluation indicators include “academic reputation”, “citation rate per paper” and “number of papers per faculty member”. CityU academics are committed to bringing benefits to society through groundbreaking research. Nearly 210 CityU scholars have been ranked among the “Top 2% of World’s Scientists”. Compared with the university’s overall teaching and research staff, CityU’s proportion of top scientists ranks first in Hong Kong; at the same time, 28 scholars have been selected into Clarivate “The Most Cited Researchers in 2023” is also ranked first in Hong Kong based on the ratio of teaching and research staff to the number of recipients of this honor. This year, CityU has another 32 outstanding scholars who have been awarded funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2024. CityU has once again been selected into the top 100 universities in the world that have issued the most US patents, ranking first among local universities for eight consecutive years.