RSU takes development road paved by the best European universities

In his interview with the daily newspaper Diena, rector of Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) Professor Aigars Pētersons reveals the university’s intention to increase the proportion of visiting lecturers by 15% in the next five years. The RSU rector mentions another ambitious goal – to be among the top 500 universities in QS World University Rankings.

"Considering that the current proportion of visiting lecturers at RSU is close to 10%, we are looking forward to reaching a proportion of 15% over the next five years – this is a decent proportion, characteristic for open, high ranking foreign universities”, the RSU rector reveals the set goal to the daily newspaper Diena. RSU is engaged in active cooperation with Latvian organisations abroad which bring together professionals from different fields. "They might not be ready to relocate permanently, but we engage them as visiting lecturers and guest researchers for a time period that is convenient for them”, the RSU rector points out.

In the interview, RSU rector Professor Aigars Pētersons highlights another ambitious future goal, noting that he takes particular pride in this year’s achievement of RSU being ranked among the world’s top 1000 universities for the first time by international QS World University Rankings and has set the goal to reach the first 500 in the coming years. “We received 78 out of the 100 points possible for the attraction of international students and mobility. To attract the best students we are planning to offer special preparatory courses for international applicants throughout the year prior to enrolment, to make students well-equipped with the required preliminary knowledge and be truly motivated for their studies and their chosen future profession.”

The RSU rector also points out that currently the university has reached its upper threshold for the number of healthcare students as it would be extremely difficult to offer placement possibilities for a greater number of students. The current student to teacher ratio (12:1) is optimal and therefore there are no plans to increase the number of healthcare students. The rector sees the possibility of increasing the number of social sciences students. The RSU social sciences direction will celebrate its 20th anniversary this year and the RSU rector sees the potential of integrating the healthcare and social sciences directions.

There are a number of specialities where social sciences and medicine are mutually linked, e.g. patient rights, doctor-patient interaction, healthcare management, etc.

RSU rector Professor Aigars Pētersons

In his interview with the Diena newspaper, the RSU rector not only addresses such issues as: education export, study quality and international ratings but also talks about RSU engagement in solving the nationwide issue of providing regional hospitals with young and well-trained staff.