Eight universities in Hungary have made it onto the Times Higher Education (THE) 2020 list, an international ranking of higher education institutions based on thirteen diverse criteria for educational and research performance, including citations, knowledge transfer and internationalization.
Hungarian Insider highlights that Semmelweis University achieved the best place, and in its field of expertise, came close to being among the top 100 in the world.
THE lists the 1,400 best universities in the world, among which were found Semmelweis University (SE), Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Debrecen University of Pécs, University of Szeged, University of Applied Sciences, Corvinus and Szent István University (SZIE).
SE ranked 457th, 34 places ahead of last year. The university is also among the thirty most-ranked institutions in the world and has the 14th highest growth rate in terms of citation.
Balázs Hankó, Deputy Rector for Strategy and Development at Semmelweis, adds that SE is 41st on THE’s European Teaching Ranking, which focuses specifically on educational performance, based, among other things, on student opinion.
“In my opinion, it does not seem at all a distant and unachievable goal for our institution to become one of the 100 best in the world by 2030. We are already ranked high in the university rankings. For example, in the equally important QS ranking, we are among the 250 best in the medical field in the world, and even more narrowly in the pharmaceutical top 200,” states Hankó.
Per the rector, US News has ranked SE at 112th in the field of cardiovascular science and there has been a growing number of foreign students who choose to study at the university as well, testament to the quality of education it provides. “At present, we have 3,400 foreign students coming from seventy countries, with triple and even six-fold oversubscription at certain courses,” said Hankó.
Subject areas are also more important to the ELTE leadership than the overall global rankings, in that a university can actually rank higher per a given field than its overall ranking. Its General Deputy Rector, László Darázs, says that the university maintains its spot in the QS aggregate list in the 501-600 range, out of a total of 28,000 institutions but this is only achieved by improving each and every year. If it did not, its ranking would in fact slip. “We need to produce increasing scientific performance to keep this place, not to mention to improve it. That is why we are working not only on a campaign basis, but also on measures that will enable us to make progress, improve our indicators and draw on sources of excellence,” states Darázs.
Photo credit: Semmelweis Kft.