Times Higher Education Ranking: RSU ranks top in Latvia and second in the Baltics
For the second consecutive year, Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) has been ranked as the best university in Latvia in the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. This year, our university ranks 601–800 among the best universities in the world. The University of Tartu still ranks the highest among all Baltic universities, while RSU and Tallinn University of Technology share second place.
Last year, 1,662 universities were included in THE World University Rankings 2023, but this year the number rose to 1,799 universities from 104 countries that passed the criteria. In an increasingly competitive environment, entering into and retaining a position in the rankings becomes ever more challenging for any university. All four research universities from Latvia have made it into the rankings, and their order in the ranking table remains unchanged: RSU is the ranked highest, followed by the University of Latvia (801-1000), Riga Technical University (1201-1500), and Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies (1501+).
‘Our high position in the Times Higher Education ranking confirms that RSU is a globally competitive research university where students receive an internationally recognised and valued education. I am proud of the outstanding performance of our academic staff, researchers, and team who have contributed to achieving the highest result among Latvian universities, even though we are newcomers to this ranking.’
Professor Aigars Pētersons, RSU Rector
A key prerequisite for being included in this ranking is conducting intensive research. This criterion is based on data from the Elsevier Scopus database and takes universities’ research impact, the number of indexed publications, as well as universities’ international cooperation into account. This makes it possible for only a small number of the world's top universities to be included in the THE ranking.
Compiling the ranking, universities are evaluated according to 13 criteria in five main areas: teaching, research, citation, industry income, and international income. RSU achieved the highest result in two categories - global outlook and citation. These are not only the university’s best indicators, but also the highest results in Latvia. The university's best result was in the internationality indicator - RSU ranks 297th in the world in this category. This indicator assesses a university's ability to attract international students and lecturers, and also calculates the proportion of scientific publications that have at least one international co-author. The university’s second-best result was in the category regarding citation of scientific publications, which measures the quality of research. Here, RSU is ranked 399th in the world.
THE is considered one of the most influential university rankings in the world and has been compiling rankings since 2004. Since then, THE has become one of the most reliable sources of providing data for students, academicians, university leaders, as well as government and industry representatives to help assess the performance of universities on a global scale.
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