This year, Vilnius University (VU) maintains the strongest leadership position, ranking in the 19th place in the overall ranking, while last year VU took the 32nd place. Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU), ranking in the 45th place, this year is also the best second university and the leader of technical universities in Lithuania. Last year, VGTU was in the 47th place in the published ranking of ’’Emerging Europe and Central Asia 2014-2015’’ of the ‘‘QS World University Ranking‘‘. 

 

’’Our position in top 50 of regional ’’QS World University Ranking’’ for the last two years is very good not only for our university, but also for the whole educational system of Lithuania, taking into account the fact that every year they evaluate more and more higher education institutions. This year the QS evaluated five hundred higher education institutions, as compared with three hundred last year. Five Lithuanian higher education institutions entered the top list of 150 best world‘s universities this year - it is the best result for the Baltic countries’’ - said Asta Radzevičienė, the Vice-Rector for International relations at VGTU.

 

Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) entered the top 50 universities list only by whisker: they took the last position. The other higher education institutions of our country remained outside the list of top 50 universities: Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) took the 77th place, and Klaipėda University (KU) with other regional leaders shared the places from 121 to 130.

Already for the second time ‘‘QS World University Rankings‘‘ published a list of the best universities in the region of Emerging Europe and Central Asia, evaluating five hundred universities from thirty countries. The ranking (QS) also included higher education institutions from other Baltic countries: three from Latvia and four from Estonia. In the latter, Tartu University, occupying the 4th place, is undoubtedly the leader, while Latvian brothers should be happy with the 46th place of the University of Latvia. 

 

‘‘QS World University Rankings‘‘ ranked M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University the leader of the region. VGTU has a joint Master‘s program with this university.

This ranking is featuring the advantages of academic staff of the region. The methodology of ‘‘QS University Rankings‘‘, being released for a decade already, differs from that of ‘‘Emerging Europe and Central Asia Rankings‘‘ in some evaluation criteria and percentage of their importance. The ‘‘Emerging Europe and Central Asia Rankings‘‘ used the following criteria: academic reputation (30%), employer reputation (20%), faculty/student ratio (15%), papers per faculty (Scopus database) (10%), web visibility and impact (10%), citations per paper (Scopus database) (5%), staff with a PhD (5%), and the proportion of international faculty to international students (2,5%).