U-Multirank, the new global university ranking, released its second edition online. This year 1,200 higher education institutions from 83 countries took part in the ranking. Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) scored 10 No.1 assessments in four categories (out of five). This result is among the best in Lithuania.
“Our efforts were rewarded – as much as five indicators of the University’s performance went up from the last year”, says Director of KTU’s Strategic Planning and Quality Solveiga Buožiūtė.
KTU got the highest rank (band 1 out of 5) for the number of interdisciplinary publications, art related output, income from private sources, spin-offs, international undergraduate and masters programmes, percentage of student employability and work placement and income from regional sources.
KTU remains the leader in regional engagement and teaching and learning categories. International orientation indicators soared upwards from the last year.
U-Multirank funded by European Commission provides a fresh outlook on ranking system. This system does not produce a league table of the world’s ‘top’ 100 universities based on composite scores. Instead, it allows users to identify a university’s strengths and weaknesses, or the aspects that most interests them.
Because U-Multirank presents data on 31 different indicators, it shows that Harvard and MIT are the top performers when it comes to the highest numbers of publications and patents. But looking more closely, it reveals that Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences in Germany has the highest percentage of co-publications with industry (showing the intensity of its co-operation with companies), and that the highest levels of student mobility are to be found in business schools like IESEG School of Management Lille in France. U-Multirank clearly shows that various aspects of excellence are to be found in many different universities and that the concept of the “best” university in the world depends on what you’re looking for.
“No single university is good at everything”, said Professor Dr. Frans van Vught, U-Multirank’s joint project leader. “Only just over 8% of the institutions show a broad range of ‘very good’ performance (more than 10 ‘A’ scores). But U-Multirank also shows that 50% of them achieve one-to-five ‘A’ scores (very good) on specific indicators. So we can clearly see that while some universities are good at many things, most universities are good – even excellent – in specific areas.”
This year U-Multirank’ team processed data on more than 1,800 faculties and 7,500 study programmes in seven fields of study. With 21,000 data scores on the institutional level and 37,000 on the field-base level, U-Multirank is the largest global university ranking – and the most comprehensive information system on universities – in the world.
The third U-Multirank rankings will be released in March 2016.
For more information on the ranking please visit: http://www.u-multirank.eu.
