BME among the 800 best higher education institutes of the World

It's the first time that BME is listed in Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

In the data input of the recently published World University Ranking the British  Times Higher Education weekly's there were 1128 participating institutes. In the 2015-2016 report, data about the best 800 institute were published, that includes six Hungarian universities: the Semmelweis University (SE), the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), the University of Szeged (SZTE), the University of Debrecen (DE) and the University of Pécs (PTE).

Phil Bathy, editor of Times Higher Education Rankings wrote the position of BME in the 601-800 range in a letter to the University – told Tibor Czigány, dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.

Hungarian hihger education institute had never been listed in this University Ranking. (In other lists of THE there had already been Hungarian data, for example in the BRICS & Emerging Economies lists in 2014 and 2015, there were SZTE, DE and SZTE, in the ranking in social sciences there was the Central European University (CEU) from Hungary – the editor.)

According to the analysis BME was the best in Industry income and knowledge transfer. In that field BME is ranked 373rd with 39.7 point, slightly above the average (36.9 pont). That indicator (pillar) has a 2.5% weight factor in the calculation of world ranking – told Dávid Barton,  member of BME OMIKK staff who is responsible for monitoring university rankings.

This World University Ranking is compiled yearly upon five pillars: education environment (Teaching), the number if citations of the publications of the institute (Citations), the market income (Industry income), and the number of foreign staff members and students (International outlook). The first three pillars have equally 30% weight, Industrial income weighted 2.5% and International outlook has a weight factor of 7.5% - according to the expert. (The current methodology and the weight factors of the indicators were published in the last week. Details are available here, while the indicators of BME are shown here – the editor.)

Times Higher Education used to compile World University Ranking in cooperation with QuacquarelliSymonds (QS) before 2009. While QS keeps publishing rankings using its formerly elaborated methodology, THE acquired publication and citation data from Thomson-Reuters instead of using Elsevier's data. For this reason THE renking is often mentioned as Thomson Reuters World University Rankings. From this year, the publication data have been analyzed by THE ising Elsevier data (Scopus, SciVal). One of the selection criteria of the recently ranked 1128 institutions was more than 200 publications yearly in the last five years. This selection criteria has been checked using Scopus database.

The curiosity of the newest list that it includes already 800 institutes for the first 200 from 2004 to 2010 a,d the firs 400 from 2011 to 2014. Formerly the first 200 had individual rank and there were intervals of 25 between 200 and 300, and intervals of 50 from 300 to 400. Within the interval the institutes are listed alphabetically, indicating their similar position.
The top five of  THE World University Rankings have not change too much in the last five years. The first is California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the second is Harvard, the third is Oxford and the fourth is Stanford. MIT's fifth place in 2013-2014 has been taken by Cambridge last year. (The first five is the same this year. - the editor.)

In the ranks of the followers there could have been changes due to the replacement of the Anglo-Saxon oriented Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) with Scopus database (Elsevier), which is better in representing publications of European and Asian countries. As a consequence, the newly registered institutes have not ranked to the end of the previous lists, but could reach positions between 300 and 400 and some of them there are in the top 200, that is between universities of unchanged performance – mentioned Dávid Barton.

-BK-