Kyung Hee University's Hotel and Tourism Management Ranks Third Worldwide... Expanding Research Horizons Through AI and Telecommunications Convergence

[Financial News] Kyung Hee University placed a total of six academic fields among the world’s top 100 in global university rankings, including a third-place ranking worldwide in hotel and tourism management.
According to the 2026 ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, released on the 17th, Kyung Hee University ranked No. 1 in South Korea in three fields: hotel and tourism management, telecommunications engineering, and food science and engineering. In the global rankings, the three fields also posted their highest-ever results, placing third in hotel and tourism management, 21st in telecommunications engineering, and 46th in food science and engineering. A total of 21 academic fields ranked among the world’s top 500.
The rise of hotel and tourism management resulted from proactively combining traditional service research with advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data. The Smart Tourism Research Center (STRC) has led the global academic community by developing research standards that integrate tourism and information technology. Its research is driven by faculty members such as Koo Chulmo and Namho Chung, who are recognized as researchers among the world’s top 1%. The university also integrated its specialized departments in 2023 to remove barriers between disciplines. Along with English-taught courses across all subjects and international students making up more than 20% of the student body, this strategy led to a substantial increase in international joint research.
The university’s progress in advanced engineering fields was also notable. Telecommunications engineering has firmly maintained its No. 1 ranking in South Korea for seven consecutive years since 2020, led by a specialized research center developing sixth-generation mobile communications technology and a program for training talent. Food science and engineering also climbed from 142nd in 2023 to 46th in just three years, retaining the top spot in South Korea for three consecutive years. Electrical and electronic engineering and computer engineering entered the world’s top 100 for the first time, demonstrating Kyung Hee University’s research competitiveness across advanced industries.
Behind these achievements are differentiated compensation and tailored support programs for outstanding researchers. Kyung Hee University has provided comprehensive support to help newly appointed professors establish themselves in research, while offering clear incentives to researchers with exceptional results. It has also expanded graduate enrollment in advanced fields to broaden the base of researchers in next-generation telecommunications, computing, and artificial intelligence. As of 2025, these efforts had laid the foundation for producing four researchers among the world’s top 1% and 120 among the top 2%.
The ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects is an international assessment that analyzes 57 academic fields across more than 2,000 universities in over 100 countries and regions worldwide. It excludes survey-based subjective reputation scores and measures the objective level of research using only research papers published over the previous five years, qualitative citation indicators, and major academic award records.
[email protected] Kim Man-ki Reporter