According to QSUR 2024, which was released this Tuesday, the University of Porto appears in the 253rd position, advancing 21 ranks compared to the previous version of this international classification of higher education, which resulted from an evaluation of the performance of 2963 institutions, according to nine indicators.
The “ranking” is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in North America, which for the twelfth year in a row holds this first place, followed by two British universities: Cambridge and Oxford.
The “top ten” also includes Harvard and Stanford universities, Imperial College London, ETH Zurich (the first institution in continental Europe), the National University of Singapore, UCL (UK) and the University of California Berkeley.
In Portugal, after the University of Porto, it is followed by the universities of Aveiro (ranked 344), Coimbra (ranked 351) Nova de Lisbon (ranked 400), Minho (611-620), ISCTE (751-760.ª) and the Portuguese Catholic University (901 -950.ª).
The University of São Paulo is ranked 85th and, for its part, appears to be the best ranked in Latin America and the best in a country where Portuguese is the official language.
The nine indicators considered in preparing this “ranking” are academic reputation (30%), professor citations (20%), reputation among employers (15%), employability (5%), and ratio between faculty and students (10%), international students (5%), international faculty (5%), research conducted in international collaborations (5%) and sustainability (5%).
At a press conference, QS Vice-President Ben Souter confirmed that this year there has been “the largest systemic change” in the list of higher education institutions since it began to be drawn up in 2004, and referred to the new standards.
Among the new criteria, he confirmed that it was decided to include the “sustainability” scale, which evaluates the contribution of each university in reducing its environmental impact, after it had also strengthened the weight of the “international research network”, which rewards cooperation with institutions. From other countries, as well as “reputable among employers.”
On the other hand, the weight of the ratio of faculty / number of students, as well as “academic reputation”, has been reduced.
Using the new methodology, 75% of African universities in the “ranking” improved their ranking, “the Arab region continues to compete increasingly” and Australia managed for the first time to place three universities in the top 20.
Ben Sutter also mentioned that due to the increasing importance of “ranking”, over the past few years we have seen how some universities have “adapted” and tried to respond to the metrics considered in QSUR.
“Universities have taken a more serious stance on their reputation, improved communication and focused more on being selective about the research they conduct and its potential impact,” added the QS Vice-Chancellor.
Asked about the possibility that some centers might try to improve their position in the “ranking” by paying prestigious researchers to enroll in that university, even if they do their main work at another university, Sutter said that “where this kind of tactic is, if exists, it will have the greatest impact on citation indices.”
The vice president explained that the QS classification uses the Scopus database of scholarly citations, produced by academic publisher Elsevier, which “works very hard to ensure that its data remains accurate.”
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