The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019 were announced earlier this week. More than 1,250 universities were ranked this year, among them – only two Lithuanian institutions, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) and Vilnius University. KTU’s increased cooperation with industry is reflected by the growing Industry Income score, which is one of the important ranking criteria’s.
THE Rankings present the international league table for the research-intensive universities of the world based on 5 criteria: teaching, research, citations, international outlook and industry income. KTU has been present in the rankings for several years; since the last issue of the Rankings, the University’s results have grown in several categories.
This year, the change in industry income criteria is the most significant – its score grew by 5% in comparison to 2018. In THE Rankings this criterion represents the level of knowledge transfer present in the ranked institution, as income from industry signifies the willingness of companies and organisations to purchase services or inventions from the higher education institution.
KTU is putting significant efforts into expansion of cooperation between the University and private organisations, it is building collaborations with international businesses.
“KTU can offer not only high quality of innovation and research for business and industry, but also the highly qualified professionals fulfilling the needs of the job market”, says Lolita Jurkšienė, Head of KTU’s Strategy Monitoring and Processes Office.
The University improved its performance in other fields too: the 5% growth in the international outlook criteria signifies the growing KTU appeal among international prospective students. The criterion is based on the numbers of international students and staff and on the joint research projects with international colleagues. The KTU citation score also improved since last year.
“In the international arena KTU is visible and valued for the achievements of its scientists, teachers and students. These results are inspiring the University’s community to keep working in improving study and research quality and to develop inter-institutional links both on national and international level”, says Jurkšienė.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019 is the only global university performance table to judge research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators are being used to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.
Overall, 86 countries are represented, including Iraq, Jamaica, Nepal, Tanzania and Kazakhstan for the first time.
