Estonia has reached record high in the QS World University Rankings

According to one of the most important university ranking lists, the QS World University Rankings, the University of Tartu now holds the highest position ever – 379.

Rector of the University of Tartu, Professor Volli Kalm, said he was very pleased about the improved ranking of the University of Tartu and gave credit to the entire university for this achievement. “The University of Tartu has set high ambitions and quality requirements for itself both in research and teaching, so ranking high on global lists is a satisfying recognition to our everyday work,” Kalm said.

The steady rise of the Tartu University is the more valuable considering that new universities generously financed by countries with faster economic growth are added to the list all the time, the university said in a statement. “Doing well in the rankings is not an objective in itself for the university, but the high position shows that our continuous work in setting and achieving development objectives is recognised outside the university and outside Estonia,” emphasised Kalm.

In 2013, the University of Tartu was placed 461–470. This year’s higher position is due to the fact that the University of Tartu has improved its performance in all aspects taken into account when compiling the ranking list, the university said.

“The University of Tartu got a very high result in the survey of academics. The reputation of the University of Tartu in the academic world has improved significantly – by 7.4 points in only one year, from 30.5 to 37.9,” Reesi Lepa, Head of International Cooperation, said.

In the process of preparing the ranking list, QS takes into account a survey among academic leaders and heads of institutions of higher education; the proportion of students and lecturers; the reputation of the university as the employer; the significance of academic publications; and the percentage of foreign lecturers and students.

In addition to preparing the general ranking, QS has also ranked the world’s universities according to their academic reputation in five subject areas: arts and humanities, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine, natural science and social sciences and management. The first 400 are ranked in each subject area.

The leader of the chart is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by the Imperial College London and University of Cambridge. As to the universities of the Baltic states, the Tallinn University of Technology is positioned 501–550, Vilnius University 551–600, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University 701+ and the University of Latvia 701+.

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Cover photo: A student “flying off” from Tartu.