British consulting company Quacquarelli Symonds has published its annual ranking of the world’s top universities QS World University Rankings 2021. It presents 1,000 universities, 47 of which are new in the ranking. There are six Ukrainian ones.

Ranking method

QS World University Rankings is compiled based on a global study of the level of educational and scientific achievements of universities. Its methodology includes statistical analytics, data from the Scopus database, as well as information obtained from an expert survey of representatives of the international academic community, and employers. The ranking takes into account six quantitative and qualitative indicators, each of which affects the formation of evaluation of the university:

  1. Academic Reputation (40%)
  2. Employer Reputation (10%) 
  3. Faculty/Student Ratio (20%) 
  4. Citations per faculty (20%) 
  5. International Faculty Ratio (5%) 
  6. International Student Ratio (5%) 

Top 10 universities 

The universities of the United States and the United Kingdom remain at the top of QS World University Rankings 2021.

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  2. Stanford University
  3. Harvard University
  4. California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
  5. University of Oxford
  6. ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
  7. University of Cambridge
  8. Imperial College London
  9. University of Chicago
  10. UCL – London’s Global University

Ukrainian universities

QS World University Rankings 2021 includes 6 Ukrainian universities: 

  1. V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University got the highest evaluation and has risen in the new ranking by 14 positions (No. 477)
  2. Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (601-650)
  3. National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute” (651-700)
  4. National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (701-750)
  5. Sumy State University (701-750)
  6. Lviv Polytechnic National University (801-1000)

It is worth noting that only V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University is evaluated according to all six indicators of the ranking. While the other 5 contain mostly only data on the number of students.