The University of Turku was placed 287th in the QS World University Rankings 2021. All in all, 1,000 different universities were globally ranked according to six indicators.
QS World University Rankings uses different comparison indicators in their ranking: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, faculty/student ratio, international faculty ratio, and international student ratio.
Nine Finnish universities were among the best ranked 1,000 universities in the world, and the University of Turku was nationally the third best at the 287th place. The University's ranking remained the same as last year. The University of Helsinki was ranked 104th and Aalto University as 127th.
The reputation indicators of QS ranking are based on surveys conducted for researchers and employers, and their significance in the ranking is great. In the evaluated indicators, the University of Turku has improved its ranking in academic reputation, citations per faculty and faculty/student ratio in which the University reached its best placement this year as the 236th. However, employer reputation and both international faculty and student ratio have dropped and the University has the most to improve in the number of international students.
– We are once again pleased with the ranking success of the University. The coronavirus situation brings challenges to the development of internationality, but we trust that the situation will improve with time and the developing digital teaching methods will also bring new possibilities to internationalisation, says Vice Rector Kalle-Antti Suominen.
Vice Rector Mika Hannula adds that the University’s decisive initiative to expand its operation to engineering education and research will also have a positive impact on the University’s internationalisation in the long run.
– For example, student exchange is very popular among engineering students and I believe that the number of international students will increase significantly in the next few years on the University of Turku campus as well, says Hannula.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) holds the first place in the ranking, Stanford University came in second, and Harvard University was placed third, all of them from the United States. The top ten also included four universities from Great Britain, two other universities from the US, and one from Switzerland.
