UWr in the latest THE World University Rankings
The University of Wrocław has been included in the latest ranking of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023. It was positioned in the top 1201–1500 best universities in the world and proved to be the best in the research category, where it got 590th place.
Wrocław Medical University has also achieved enormous success by being included in THE WUR for the first time and in the top 351–400 universities worldwide.Such a high rating was owed due to the citations of the University researchers, for which they were given a total of 89 points! Sincere congratulations to Wrocław Medical University!
Other Polish medical universities and medical faculties have also been positioned highly in the ranking. The Medical University of Lodz (included for the first time) and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków can be found within the top 601–800 universities. The top 801–1000 is where the Medical University of Gdańsk (also included for the first time) and the University of Warsaw were positioned.
This year, a total of 32 Polish universities have participated in THE WUR, compared to last year’s 23. The UWr got 9th place among all the other Polish universities.
The 1st place was given to the University of Oxford, and the 2nd – to Harvard University. The University of Cambridge and Stanford University were placed as 3rd.
Times Higher Education World University Rankings is one of the largest and most prestigious university rankings – it evaluates over 2000 universities worldwide. This year, the final ranking included 1799 of them – 137 more than last time, which suggests that the competition grows each year.
THE WUR compares universities that conduct extensive research activities by evaluating them in the following areas: teaching quality, research, knowledge transfer, and internationalization.
The universities are evaluated in five fields, each of which having a specific percentage weight that affects the overall score:
- teaching quality and learning environment – 30%
- research quality (productivity, reputation, and research grant) – 30%
- citations (research influence) – 30%
- internationalization (staff, students, research) – 7.5%
- commercial activity income (knowledge transfer within the industry) – 2.5%
Each of these categories is composed of a few ratings; 13 in total.
THE WUR collects their data from multiple sources: questionnaires filled by universities, Scopus database (publications and citations), and university reputation research conducted among scientists worldwide.
One of the most important and influential elements of the ranking is the university reputation. THE WUR distinguishes 2 ratings related to it: reputation associated with the teaching quality, with a 15% weight (part of the teaching quality field), as well as reputation associated with research quality, with an 18% weight (part of the research quality field).
Reputation research, or – in other words – recognizability research is conducted through questionnaires sent by THE WUR to academic staff, including UWr employees. Interviewees can select local or foreign universities which, in their opinion, have the highest research and teaching quality.
In terms of partial results, UWr proved to be the best in the research category, where it scored 24 points and got 590th place in the world. For comparison, last year, the UWr scored 15.4 points in that category, so the improvement is quite significant. The University’s strong aspect is also internationalization. In that category, the UWr was positioned at 935th place in the world. The category includes ratings related to the proportion of foreign academic employees among all other employees, the percentage of foreign students among all other students, as well as international cooperation in the scope of publishing work conducted with foreign authors.
The full ranking can be found here.
Translated by Konrad Maciaszek (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
