AppliedHE Public & Private University Ranking: ASEAN 2025
AppliedHE has been compiling university rankings since 2021, with the aim of providing students, parents and other higher education stakeholders with an independent benchmark for comparing universities.
For the 2023 edition of the ranking, a number of significant changes are being made, namely the inclusion of reporting and non-reporting universities (non-reporting universities do not submit data), and the production of two sub-rankings, one for public universities and one for private universities.
Hybrid Model: Reporting and Non-Reporting
In the past, AppliedHE rankings were based on an “opt-in” model, whereby universities volunteer to submit data and run the AppliedHE student survey. Unfortunately, the opt-in model attracted a relatively small number of universities, making the ranking significantly less valuable for both students and participating universities due to the lack of reference data.
The new methodology is a hybrid opt-in model, whereby universities are included in the ranking based on publicly available data or estimations and universities will have the option to submit data as “reporting” institutions to ensure a more accurate result.
Due to the lower reliability of data, estimates or proxies that are exclusively from public sources, “non-reporting” universities will be evaluated more conservatively than reporting universities. They may therefore be ranked slightly lower than “reporting” universities.
Sub-Rankings: Public and Private Universities
In the beginning, AppliedHE rankings targeted only private universities in South East Asia, a large and largely underserved segment of the global higher education system. Due to strong interest from public universities, AppliedHE is now introducing two parallel sub-rankings: one for Public universities and one for Private universities.
The definition of a private university or a public university depends on the regulatory definition of the university’s home country. Further details are provided on our definitions page.
Ranking Criteria
Following deliberations by the Ranking Advisory Board (RAB) of AppliedHE, the following methodology and weightings for compiling the ranking were proposed.
See also the Ranking Definitions for further clarification.
Private Universities
| CRITERIA | REPORTING | NON-REPORTING |
| Teaching & Learning (40%) | * AppliedHE Student Survey or Student Barometer (20%) * Faculty to student ratio (20%) | * Lowest student survey or barometer score of reporting universities (20%) * Faculty to student ratio (20%) |
| Employability (20%) | 6-months post-graduation (self) employment or further study based on institution-submitted report (10% per total graduates and 10% per total survey respondents) OR discounted national rate (see “Non-Reporting”) | Discounted national youth employment rate based on the youth unemployment rate; for example, 1.5x 10% youth unemployment rate = 85% employability rate. |
| Research (10%) | * Google Scholar citations per paper published in 2019-2023 (5%), * Google Scholar citations per faculty for papers published in 2019-2023 (5%) | Same as Reporting |
| Community Engagement (10%) | * Google News reports in 2023 (5%) * AppliedHE Student Survey or Student Barometer (5%) | * Google News reports in 2023 (5%) * Lowest student survey or barometer score of reporting universities (5%) |
| Internationalization (10%) | * Percentage international students (5%) * Percentage international faculty (5%) | Same as Reporting |
| Institutional Reputation (10%) | AppliedHE peer nominations survey (10%) | Same as Reporting |
Public Universities
| CRITERIA | REPORTING | NON-REPORTING |
| Teaching & Learning (40%) | * AppliedHE Student Survey or Student Barometer (20%) * Faculty to student ratio (20%) | * Lowest student survey or barometer score of reporting universities (20%) * Faculty to student ratio (20%) |
| Employability (15%) | 6-months post-graduation (self) employment or further study based on institution-submitted report (7.5% per total graduates and 7.5% per total survey respondents) OR discounted national rate (see “Non-Reporting”) | Discounted national youth employment rate based on the youth unemployment rate; for example, 1.5x 10% youth unemployment rate = 85% employability rate. |
| Research (15%) | * Google Scholar citations per paper published in 2019-2023 (5%), * Google Scholar citations per faculty for papers published in 2019-2023 (5%) * Webometrics Excellence/Scholar indicator (5%) | Same as Reporting |
| Community Engagement (10%) | * Google News reports in 2023 (5%) * AppliedHE Student Survey or Student Barometer (5%) | * Google News reports in 2023 (5%) * Lowest student survey or barometer score of reporting universities (5%) |
| Internationalization (10%) | * International student ratio (5%) * International faculty ratio (5%) | Same as Reporting |
| Institutional Reputation (10%) | AppliedHE peer nominations survey (10%) | Same as Reporting |
Ranking Computation
To ensure that extreme values of indicators do not have an outsized influence on the ranking results, a log-normalization is applied to the following indicators: Google Scholar citations per paper and citations per faculty.
Institutional Data Submission Checklist
- Institution name – Please enter the name used by your institution for English-speaking international audiences
- Location of institution – Please confirm that your institution is located in one of the ASEAN member states: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, or Vietnam
- Confirm that your institution qualifies as a “university” – (a) provides Bachelor- and Master-level courses, (b) awards its own Degrees and Diplomas, and (c) is recognized by the government as a locally accredited public or private institution of higher learning
- Nominate an official contact person (liaison) with their name, designation, email address and telephone number
- Institution logo (png, gif, jpg, jpeg, maximum size 5 MB) and link to official English-language website
- Faculty, international faculty, students and international student numbers based on the ranking definitions
- Graduate outcomes (employment and further studies after 6 months) with evidence from an official graduate tracer study. If graduate outcome survey data is not available (or does not meet AppliedHE standards), we will assign an estimated value based on the national youth unemployment rate (see ranking criteria)
- Institution’s official web domain (used for faculty e-mail)
- Name of institution in other languages than English, so that we can track its online presence
- A link to the institution’s official Google Scholar profile (if available)