On 11 September, Times Higher Education published the results of their annual university ranking. Compared to the previous year, the number of Russian universities in the ranking has increased from 35 to 39.
Voronezh State University takes 1001+ position among the world's best universities and is the 16th best university in Russia. The level of teaching at the university received particularly high scores from Times Higher Education. It should be noted, that VSU has been included in this prestigious ranking for a number of years and thus has been promoting education in the Central Black Earth region of Russia.
The ranking uses 5 key parameters: learning environment, research, citation, international outlook (the quality of academic staff and students), and industry income from introduction of the university’s developments (so called “knowledge transfer”).
“According to the results of the 2019 admission campaign, the number of international students at Voronezh State University has increased many times. At the moment, the paperwork is still being processed, however, the estimated numbers of international students are as follows: about 600 foreign citizens will be enrolled in programmes at the Institute of International Education, about 440 international students will be enrolled in first year main academic programmes, and 49 students from other countries will do master’s programmes. To a great extent, this result can be explained by our high positions in prestigious world university rankings. I mean some states restrict the number of their students studying in Russia unless the Russian universities are included in Times or QS rankings. What is more, information published by international ranking agencies influences the choice of the educational institution by foreign citizens. VSU has been taking high positions in the international rankings for a long time. The real status of a leading university is determined by the positions of the institution in reputable international ranking systems rather than those with statuses such as “federal”, “national research”, or “key regional” which are granted for political reasons. Another side of international university rankings is an artificial increase in publishing activity due to a large number of articles by Russian universities published for money in low ranking journals which means that financial incentives are used to stimulate the academic loyalty of international colleagues. However, this is a topic for another discussion,” said VSU Rector Dmitry Endovitsky.
