Comenius University is once again among the best universities in the world
Comenius University in Bratislava is the only Slovak university to have made it into the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) academic ranking of global universities. Comenius University was ranked 637th. In comparison to last year, when the university ranked 685th, this represents an improvement of nearly fifty places.
The first three places in the rankings were occupied by American universities: Harvard University was first, Stanford University was second, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology placed third. The top five universities globally were rounded out by British universities, with the University of Cambridge placing fourth and the University of Oxford placing fifth.
The CWUR is a unique ranking which measures the quality of education and training students receive as well as the quality of university research independently of the surveys and data provided by the universities themselves. The CWUR ranking is one of a number of international ranking lists which evaluate universities around the world. It was published for the first time in 2012. It assesses more than 25,000 universities from around the world upon the basis of eight indicators:
quality of education – measured by the number of a university’s graduates who have won major international awards relative to the university’s size (25%)
graduate employment – measured by the number of a university’s graduates who have held CEO positions at the world’s top companies relative to the university’s size (25%)
quality of teaching staff – measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards (25%)
publications – measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals (5%)
influence – measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly influential journals (5%)
citations – measured by the number of highly-cited research papers (5%)
broad impact – measured by the university’s h-index (5%)
patents – measured by the number of international patent filings (5%)
“The inclusion of Comenius University in the CWUR rankings shows that our research activity and quality of teaching is comparable to the very best universities in the world, albeit with a much lower level of funding,” said university rector Professor Karol Mičieta, who sees the university’s current placing in the ranking as a call to improve on its performance in the future.
Comenius University has a longstanding tradition of being the only Slovak university to be included in a number of rankings of the best universities in the world. In the ranking lists published by the University Ranking by Academic Performance and the Round University Ranking, it has even been placed in the top 500.