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Semmelweis University among the 300 best in the world

By Judit Szabados-Dőtsch
Times Higher Education (THE) has published its 2024 World University Rankings, which lists Semmelweis University among the world’s top 300 universities. Although Semmelweis improved in most performance indicators and was the highest ranked Hungarian university, this time the changing methodology of the ranking process has resulted in the institution being positioned lower than last year.

Semmelweis University has been listed among the world’s top 300 higher education institutions in the latest THE World University Rankings 2024 by Times Higher Education. Although the university has improved steadily in terms of most performance indicators, it is now in the top 250 to 300 range, compared to last year’s 200 to 250, primarily because the methodology has changed significantly.

The world ranking traditionally measures institutions based on indicators in five areas: learning environment, research, citations, industry income and international outlook.

Semmelweis University has again achieved its highest position (200th) in the field of teaching environment, which, among other things, assesses the excellence of teaching and lecturers. However, the weight of this indicator has been reduced in the new methodology. The name of the ‘research’ indicator has been tweaked to ‘research environment’, an area in which the institution has significantly improved its position thanks to an increase in the number of publications and research income. The method of calculating the ‘citation’ indicator has also been modified: it is now classified as ‘research quality’ and three additional measures have been added. Although the university scored higher in ‘citation’ than last year, due to the new methodology it was not able to maintain its previous ranking in this area. A new measure was added to the ‘industry income’ indicator (calculating the citation rate of the publications associated with a given institution in patents) – Semmelweis scored strongly in this indicator as well as in the ‘industry income’ scaled against the number of academic staff, and thus managed to improve its performance. The institution’s scores in the ‘international outlook’ indicator have also increased, but as the calculation method proved to be more favorable for larger countries, Semmelweis University ranked lower in this indicator despite its better score.

Ádám Szabó
Translation: Judit Szabados-Dőtsch
Photo: Attila Kovács – Semmelweis University (illustration)