The University of Debrecen is among the best 800 higher education institutions in the latest Times Higher Education list. More than 1,900 higher education institutions out of 28,000 universities in the world were included in the THE World University Rankings 2024 ranking published, based on their educational and research activities, international recognition, and industrial income and patents.
As the best domestic science university, the University of Debrecen was ranked in the 601-800 category in the latest global list by the famous British ranking maker Times Higher Education. The institution improved by four hundred places compared to last year’s position of 1001-1200, provided the best performance in the education category, and this time it performed well in the field of international visibility. With this result, the University of Debrecen ranks in the top 3 percent of the world’s higher education institutions.
Zoltán Szilvássy, rector of the University of Debrecen, also praised the significant step forward, who emphasized that the current result is the fruit of the persistent work of the past years.
Five years ago, the management of the university decided to launch a targeted program in order to make the excellence of the institution visible in the rankings. This complex action program pays attention to education, the stimulation of scientific activity, the international visibility of scientific works written by the university’s researchers, as well as the development of the indexing of the journals published at the institution, so that as many journals as possible are included in the international databases
– Rector Zoltán Szilvássy explained. He added:
the ranking just published is excellent feedback on the outstanding educational, scientific and innovative activities of the University of Debrecen, in which there are areas where further improvement needs to be achieved.
In connection with the publication, Phil Baty, the head of global affairs at THE, also highlighted the performance of Hungarian higher education institutions and especially congratulated the University of Debrecen for improving two bars and becoming among the top 800 in the ranking this year.
The methodology of this year’s 20th edition of the World University Rankings has been significantly updated in order to make the ranking even more reflective of the performance of research-intensive universities. The number of detailed calibrated performance indicators has been increased from thirteen to eighteen. The composition and weighting of the research indicators were changed: scientific activity was now examined based on the aspects of the research environment and research quality, patents were added to the industrial indicators as a new performance indicator, and studies abroad were also included for international visibility. The five areas of the performance indicators are as follows: education 29.5% (educational environment) research environment 29% (volume, income and reputation), research quality 30% (citations, research strength, research excellence and research influence), international visibility 7.5% (colleagues, students and research), and industry 4% (revenue and patents).
At the top of the ranking is the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, as well as the strategic partner of Stanford University in the United States and the University of Debrecen, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Among the domestic higher education institutions, in addition to the University of Debrecen, Semmelweis University, Eötvös Lóránd University, Óbuda University, Pécs University, Szeged University, among others, were included in the global ranking.
The complete ranking is available on THE website, where you can also view the list of Hungarian institutions.
(unideb.hu)
Photo: MTI/Czeglédi Zsolt
