OREANDA-NEWS. On 2 December, British journal Times Higher Education published their ranking The Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings, where the University of Tartu placed 31st.

This is the third annual ranking of universities of emerging economies compiled by THE. The previous two ranked the 100 best, this year there are 200 universities on the list. UT is in the ranking for the first time this year.

The ranking considers universities of 48 countries, which meet the Financial Times Stock Exchange’s classification for emerging or quickly developing economies, incl. the so called BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South-Africa. 35 countries are represented in the ranking of 200 best universities. The top ten is dominated by universities of China and Turkey.

“It is great that we have a chance to compare ourselves to other countries and universities again. According to editor of THE World University Rankings Phil Baty, making it to the 200 in this ranking is a great achievement,” said UT Vice Rector for Development Erik Puura and added: “And it is especially good that we are internationally competitive as a national university, because usually these rankings are dominated by universities where the languages of instruction are those which are spoken globally and in neighbouring countries.”

The ranking compares universities on the basis of 13 performance indicators, which describe the study environment, research significance, academic reputation, revenue, innovation and the extent of internationalisation.

Compared to the main ranking of THE, where UT placed between 351–400 in 2015, the ranking of universities of emerging economies gives less importance to research significance, i.e. the citations of research publications, and the importance of internationalisation and entrepreneurial revenue is bigger.