The Center for International Projects “Yevroosvita” (http://www.euroosvita.net/), in partnership with the international group of experts IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence (http://ireg-observatory.org/en/), has presented the fifteenth academic ranking of higher education institutions of Ukraine “Top-200 Ukraine 2021”.
The National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” took second place. The only university that outran Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute is the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University is on the third step of the rating.
According to the rating compilers, the experts considered current trends in higher education in Ukraine and the world. Higher education in Ukraine is currently undergoing profound changes, not to mention the impact of the COVID-2019 pandemic. Therefore, the results of the International Beijing Conference IREG 2020 “University rankings in the time of uncertainty”, which took place on October 20-21, 2020) and the Berlin Principles approved by the participants of the second IREG meeting in Berlin, Germany, on May 18-20, 2006, were also essential for compiling the fifteenth academic ranking of higher education institutions.
The following principles defined the basis of this year ranking of Ukrainian universities:
- To ensure openness, transparency, objectivity, and independence of university rankings. For this purpose, only open data of direct measurements, posted on the web resources of independent national and international organizations and institutions, were used. The method of calculating university ratings is available to the public to verify the results.
- To take into account the comprehensiveness and diversity of university activities. The experts evaluated university work on a broader base of indicators compared to known rating systems.
- Priority of European integration processes. Based on the importance of European integration processes in higher education in Ukraine, the weights of international indicators of universities (results in world rankings, participation of universities in Erasmus + programs of the European Union, etc.) were higher than the weights of national indicators.
This year universities ranking based on a set of ten indicators: academic activity (position of the university in the international ranking QS World University Rankings), research and publishing activities (according to Scopus), evaluation of research achievements of universities by comparing their websites (according to Webometrics), international activity (participation in EU Erasmus + programs), citations of scientific works of university scientists in high-ranking scientific publications (according to Nature Index), quality of presentation and popularity of higher education institutions on the Internet based on independent webometric indicators according to UniRank), quality of training (according to the results of the All-Ukrainian Student Olympiads 2018/2019 and competitions of scientific works 2019/2020 by the amount of points), educational and scientific work (Awards of the President of Ukraine and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for young scientists), inventive activity (the number of patents received by university scientists in 2020) and attractiveness of universities for entrants (average weighted value for the ratings of universities according to the number of submitted applications and the average competitive score in 2020).
More details on the method of determining the place of the university in the ranking and an example of calculating the overall rating of the university by a group of nominations can be found at http://www. euroosvita.net/index.php/?category=1&id=6868.