Ranking Breakthrough: No Time For Rest

Last night, QS university rankings for Emerging Europe and Central Asia were published by British company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS EECA University Ranking). As with last year, mostly Russian universities are amongst the leading institutions, with 44 of them in the top 150. ITMO University improved its ranking by 9 places, currently in 81st place.

As usual, university evaluation was conducted based on nine criteria. Academic Reputation and Employer reputation have the highest weight (30 and 20 percent of the total marks, respectively). The final result is also based on faculty/student ratio, citations per paper and papers per faculty, internet activity, staff with a PhD, proportion of international faculty and students.

ITMO University’s breakthrough in the QS EECA rankings is largely due to improvements in internationalization and web-impact confirmed Ekaterina Mikhailova, the Head of Unit of Strategic Planning and Ranking Research.

“University rankings in Emerging Europe and Central Asia are relatively new, however ITMO University is showing significant momentum, jumping 9 places in any international ranking is a significant result, especially as competition is increasing. So, the sample of evaluated universities in Russia increased by a third, since 48 universities in the country were assessed last year and this year there was 64.” she added.

Based on the number of foreign students, ITMO University came 32^nd on the list, as with internet activity.

Also, the first three places in the rankings were given to Russian Universities. These top three universities are MSU, Novosibirsk State University and St. Petersburg State University. The top ten also included Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic), University of Tartu (Estonia), University of Warsaw and Jagiellonian University (Poland) and others.

QS Regional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Zoya Zaitseva believes that Russian universities demonstrate great results, but the biggest victory is ahead.

"Both Project 5-100 and Russian universities having a greater interest in international placing are putting rankings in the spotlight. However, given that our universities have joined the rankings recently, much remains to be done, it's a marathon, not a sprint – expecting instant results from the efforts of the last several years is premature." – quoted in “Kommersant” newspaper.

Full results can be found here.