Seminar of international university ranking THE held in MEPhI
17.02.2017

On February, 14th, 2017 a seminar of international university ranking THE (Times Higher Education), annually published in «Times Higher Education magazine», specializing in news and other questions of higher education, was held in MEPhI. Presentations for university students and employees were made by Phil Baty, deputy editor of THE magazine, and Duncan Ross, THE data and analytics director. The seminar started with MEPhI rector Mikhail Strikhanov’s welcoming speech, who introduced honorary guests.

Phil Baty started from a short overview of THE history, its progress, WUR (world university rankings) results, data, on which rankings are based. Giving the highlights of universities’ positions, depending on different criteria of evaluation, he mentioned MEPhI’s important role in the ongoing processes: “We are delighted that MEPhI is one of our core partners in the data project, using our data tools to get insights and enable MEPhI to really start developing its strategic mission. We are really thrilled that the rector is our partner in that changes. MEPhI is a world class university, it’s in a global environment with a position in a global market, and it’s increasingly important how you position yourself.”

According to the speaker, American universities still dominate the rankings, but in the past year Asia has also added to the list, and even one Russian university was included in top 200 (Lomonosov MSU). When talking about the citations’ score, Phil Baty explained Russia’s positions by the challenge, set by the language of publication. However, in terms of teaching score our country has strongest positions (13th place), the teaching ranking is high. According to the “international outlook” indicator, Russia is on the 43th place, but has potential of development, because we have “fantastic Russian scholars who study outside Russia”.

It was also said that university positioning as a global institution is important. Being global means not just having some percent of students from international countries, but having a clear global brand.

D.Ross concentrated on the methodological side of the rankings and MEPhI brand representation. Both speakers gave an overview of MEPhI and its comparative institutions and discussed strategic opportunities for our university development.

“We focus not on the whole number of universities (about 23000), but on research intense universities. Russia is actually performing pretty well in terms of its average score compared to other universities.”

The speaker compared MEPhI with 5 other universities (KAIST (Korea), Kyoto (Japan), Purdue (the USA), Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua in China) which aren’t similar with MEPhI, but have interesting features to explore.

Duncan Ross has also explained the necessity of having an internal peer-review system, comparing it with a “critical friend”, who is on your side, helping to improve, but doing it with a critical focus.

Talking about the performance of the Purdue University, which increased the number of foreign students, the speaker mentioned the logo with a train, which symbolizes its connections with industry, boilermakers. The university administration also took risks, increasing the number of foreign students.

There was a reference to Russian universities, increasing this indicator along with the ratio of papers to academic staff. However, the decrease of the citation impact was mentioned. Top countries for student immigration include the US, the UK, Australia. Surprisingly, Russia is on the fifth place. The majority of students coming to Russia are from Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Phil Baty, who spoke about the aspect of reputation, said that it is the most important factor for foreign students, making a choice of university, as well as for academics, choosing a place for career. Examples of Columbia University in the City of New York, Nanyang Technical University, University of Melbourne, and King Abdul Aziz University have been given. Again, the importance of the logo was mentioned. MEPhI, which, according to the speaker, has perfect reputation here, has had iterations of its logo, the famous host and the fist, but several variants, and it has had historical changes to the name, so it is necessary to unify around a name and visual identity.

Another interesting example, which Ph.Baty gave, was an exhibition, organised by the University of Melbourne, with interactive stands, where people could put their hands on the sensors, or monitor their heart rate, and was aimed at drawing attention to the unversity. In his concluding remarks he recommended to be authentic, remember about university mission, goals, role in the society.

The presentations provoked lively interest among the guests of the occasion, which were gladly answered by the speakers.