Mining University continues to improve its position in international rankings.
On Thursday, September 2, Times Higher Education (THE) magazine published the results of its annual international World University Rankings. Along with QS and ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, this publisher is one of the three most respected agencies, whose recognition is considered an indisputable indicator of a university’s success.
Whereas ten years ago THE ranking included only 200 universities, today it has become one of the largest charts, ranking more than 1500 universities from all over the world. Moreover, their number increases by 150-200 schools every year. In 2019, the British experts evaluated 1396 universities, 39 of which were Russian; in 2020, the overall list included already 1527 schools (48 from Russia), and in 2021, 1662 (60 from Russia). The consequence of this policy is a constant increase in competition, i.e., in order to improve the results or hold on to the positions gained, participants must make extra efforts and constantly progress.
Five criteria are considered most important in the allocation of rankings: quality of education and research, citation, revenues from the introduction of R&D into production, and international activity. This data is collected from three sources: statistical information, the bibliometric database Scopus and a survey of representatives of the academic community.
St. Petersburg Mining University was first included in the THE ranking the year before last. Then it ranked 13th among all Russian higher education institutions (800-1000 on the global scale). Now the university is in fifth place in the Russian segment and ranks among the top 500 in the overall ranking. Next to it are such recognized giants as the Colorado School of Mines, Florida International University (USA), the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), and a number of others.
The representatives of the United Kingdom were most impressed by the volume of financial receipts from fuel and energy, mining, and chemical companies (revenues from R&D), as well as the citation rate of the university’s scientific articles. For the latter indicator, the university ranked 128th on the planet.
“Any ranking is a mirror, which in one way or another reflects the level of the educational, scientific and social environment created in the universities,” commented on the news rector Vladimir Litvinenko. “The main thing is that it should be based on criteria and numerical indicators that are clear to everyone. At the same time, we must understand that comparing technical universities with humanities or, for example, medical and agricultural universities is a certain deception, because in this case, we are, in fact, trying to answer the question of who is better: a doctor or an agrarian. For us, subject rankings are much more meaningful, as they allow for competition between specialized institutions of higher education that are solving identical problems. That’s why the stability with which we have been in the world’s top twenty mining universities according to QS for five years now is especially important for us.”
It should be noted that this year St. Petersburg Mining University has taken 12th place in the international QS ranking in the discipline “Engineering - Mineral & Mining”, improving its last year achievement by 6 positions at once. In the history of ranking, no Russian university has ever been in the first dozen of such a prestigious chart.
