RSU strengthens its leadership in the Baltics and climbs in the global sustainability rankings

Last month, the latest Times Higher Education (THE) Sustainability Impact Ratings were published, with Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) demonstrating significant progress. Maintaining its position in the 301–400 band globally, RSU now shares first place among Baltic universities and has returned to the global top 50 in the Health and Wellbeing category.

Strong Performance in the Health and Wellbeing category

RSU has once again achieved its strongest result in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 category ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’. Competing against 1,254 universities, RSU made an impressive leap from 99th place last year to 41st place globally. This is RSU's best performance in the category since 2022. The result reflects the continued development of high-quality health research, the university's substantial contribution to training highly qualified healthcare professionals, as well as improvements to the accessibility of sports facilities and services.

Progress among Latvia’s universities

RSU has managed to climb in seven out of eight SDG categories in which it has regularly participated before, as well as successfully return to the SDG-12 category ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’.

• Largest improvement – owing to the enhancement of RSU's lifelong learning programmes, the university improved its performance in SDG 4 category ‘Quality Education’ by more than 500 places, moving from the 1501+ to the 801–1000 band.
• Successful return. thanks to new initiatives, RSU participated in SDG 12 category ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ for the first time since 2020, immediately ranking in the 101–200 band among 758 universities. The university's waste management practices received particular recognition in this category.
• Leadership in Latvia – RSU achieved the highest results in both Latvia and the Baltics for SDG 3 and SDG 12. Together with the University of Latvia (UL) and Riga Technical University (RTU), it also shared the highest national ranking in SDG 8 category ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ and SDG 16 category ‘Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions’, placing in the 101–200 band. 

Success across the Baltics

In the overall ranking, RSU and RTU share first place among universities in the Baltic States. It is worth noting that Estonian universities do not yet participate in this ranking, while Lithuanian universities are ranked lower. This achievement is particularly significant given that only this year RSU began a focused effort to strengthen sustainability by integrating sustainability principles into the university's strategy. The strong result in the sustainability rankings has also been made possible through the initiative and dedication of RSU's academic and administrative units and individual members of staff.

Continuing the sustainability journey

RSU's improved performance reflects not only stronger positioning against other universities but also tangible improvements in its internal processes. The university recorded higher scores in several independent categories, including lifelong learning activities, employment practices and collaboration with government. It is also worth highlighting the university's progress in gender equality, an area for which a dedicated working group has recently been established. Gender equality is now one of four SDGs in which RSU ranks in the top quartile globally. Gender equality is now one of four SDGs in which RSU ranks in the top quartile globally.

RSU continues to strengthen its sustainability governance and plans to recruit a dedicated sustainability expert in the near future to further enhance the university's international standing.

The Times Higher Education (THE) Sustainability Impact Ratings is the only global ranking that measures universities' performance against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the 2026 ranking, a total of 1,646 universities from 116 countries were evaluated.