LONDON, November 23. /TASS/. Russia’s universities have significantly improved their positions in the QS World University Rankings: BRICS, issued by the British company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). A total of 68 Russian universities have made it into the rankings, which include 300 universities from the five BRICS member states (Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa).
Lomonosov Moscow State University, placed fifth, has shown the best results among the Russian universities. The top-50 includes a total of ten Russian universities, while 25 of them have entered the top-100, which is six universities more than in 2016. At the same time, all the Russian universities have climbed up in the rankings.
Russian universities in top-100
According to a statement by Quacquarelli Symonds, "there are numerous reasons for Russian institutions to celebrate. Novosibirsk State University has jumped from joint 20th to 11th, while Saint-Petersburg State University improves from joint 20th to 13th." Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology has climbed from 47th to 28th. It is followed by Bauman Moscow State Technical University (33), National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (35), Higher School of Economics (39), Moscow State Institute of International Relations (40) and Tomsk Polytechnic University (49).
The top-100 also includes Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (55), Kazan Federal University (59), National University of Science and Technology MISiS (61), Ural Federal University (63), Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod (72), · ITMO University (75), Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia and Southern Federal University (joint 78), Far Eastern Federal University and Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (joint 86), St. Petersburg Mining University (89), Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (90), Samara National Research University (93), Altai State University (94), Moscow Power Engineering Institute (96).
According to Quacquarelli Symonds, "even though China remains ahead with 39 top-100 BRICS universities, Russian universities are making speedier strides forward than their BRICS competitors."
Expert opinion
Regional Director for Eastern Europe & Central Asia at Quacquarelli Symonds Zoya Zaitseva pointed out that "most of the Russian universities improving their positions - all the way till the Moscow State Linguistics University which came 126th this year, there are only growths, not a single stagnation or drop down." "This is probably the moment ex-Minister of Education Dmitry Livanov has been looking forward to - we at QS really appreciate his support back in 2013 when he initiated the discussion about the educational systems which can be compared like for like," she said. "QS University Rankings for BRICS is a direct outcome of this discussion and it is demonstrating the long-anticipated progress of the Russian universities," Zaitseva added.
Rankings leaders
China’s Tsinghua University has topped the rankings for the fifth time. Universities placed second to fourth are also Chinese - Peking University (2), Fudan University (3) and University of Science and Technology of China (4).
The top-10 also includes China’s Zhejiang University (6), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (7), Nanjing University (8), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (9) and Indian Institute of Science (10).
There are a total of 95 Chinese universities in the rankings, 65 Indian ones, 61 Brazilian and 12 South African.
According to Quacquarelli Symonds, the company uses "eight metrics to evaluate universities for the QS World University Rankings: BRICS." "These metrics are: academic reputation (30% of overall score), employer reputation (20%), faculty/student ratio (20%), papers per faculty (10%), citations per paper (5%), international faculty ratio (2.5%), international student ratio (2.5%) and staff with PhD (10%)," the company added.