HSE Now Among World’s Top 200 Universities for Research in THE University Rankings

This year, HSE University has maintained its position in the 251-300 range in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The University ranks among the top 3 Russian universities along with Moscow State University (which ranks 174^th) and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (which ranks in the 201-250 range). In the THE’s global ranking of the best universities for research, HSE ranks 199^th.

The THE World University Rankings in large part evaluate universities’ research potential: more than 70% of the ranking is based on criteria related to research achievements. It was in this area that HSE showed greatest improvement (with a score increase of 4.1 points) and climbed to 199^th place in the global research-category ranking. HSE showed improvement in most other ranking categories as well. In the categories of teaching and citations, HSE ranks among the top 25% of universities in the world.

Irina Karelina, Senior Director for Strategic Planning at HSE, and HSE Vice Rector Sergey Roshchin noted the factors that allow the university to successfully represent Russian education on the world market.

Irina Karelina, Senior Director for Strategic Planning, HSE University

HSE University has been participating in world rankings since 2009. It is difficult for Russian universities to advance in world rankings, and even more so for young universities without a longstanding history. It is not only about publications in English, but also about the ability to attract international researchers and international students to the university. This means creating living and teaching conditions in a foreign country that are comfortable for them.

HSE University has been fostering a bilingual academic environment since 1996. This is an opportunity for Russian students and teachers to improve their English for free. HSE has English-speaking managers and administrators in all key areas of university support (HR, accounting, and programme offices; there are student consultants [student buddies] for accompanying foreign citizens at the university; the university dining hall menus are in two languages, and so on). At any given time, there are more than 10 bilingual events being held on HSE’s campuses every day, 365 days a year, 7 days a week, with the participation of representatives from around the world. At present, HSE has partnerships in various forms with 69 countries.

Sergey Roshchin, Vice Rector, HSE

Since 2013, HSE has been actively producing and offering online courses on global open education platforms. HSE has more than 100 online courses on Coursera and ranks among the top 5 largest university course providers on the platform. Today, more than 2 million students from 195 countries have taken various HSE courses. Almost 75% of these students are from outside of Russia. HSE University was the first and is so far the only Russian university to offer an English-taught master’s programme (Master of Data Science) that is taught entirely online on Coursera. As of 2020, the programme has already successfully enrolled two cohorts of students.

This year, the total number of Russian universities in the ranking increased from 39 to 48. Of these, 20 are participants of Russia’s Academic Excellence Project 5-100. This year, a new Project 5-100 participant, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, entered the ranking.

The ranking this year expanded to include 1,527 universities (compared to 1,397 last year). The ranking methodology is comprised of a two-tier structure. The first tier includes 5 categories: Teaching (30%), Research (30%), Citations (30%), Internationalization (7.5%), and Research Income (2.5%). Each group, in turn, consists of several subcategories that make up a second tier, which includes 5 groups of 13 criteria. All categories are assessed and calculated based on information from three sources: a survey of international experts, the Scopus bibliometric database, and data provided by the universities themselves.