02/10/2015
Times Higher Education (THE) reveals 2015-2016 World University Rankings. 800 universities were evaluated this year, and Sabancı University was within the 351-400 bracket.
Times Higher Education (THE) revealed the 2015-2016 World University Rankings. 11 Turkish universities entered the rankings this year. The Turkish universities and their respective brackets are: Koç University, 251st – 300th; Sabancı University and Bilkent University, 351st – 400th; Boğaziçi, METU and ITU, 501st – 600th; Ankara, Erciyes, Hacettepe, Istanbul and Yıldız Technical Universities, 601st - 800th.
For this year's THE World University Rankings, 1126 universities from 88 countries were assessed and universities from 70 countries made it in the top 800. 29 new countries joined the Rankings this year.
THE Rankings Editor Phil Baty said: "Turkey doubled its research budget in the last decade, and is positioned to challenge Asian countries in the rankings provided that investment in universities and research continues. In previous years, some universities in Turkey were achieving higher positions particularly due to their presence in physics experiments. The impact of articles in this field was reduced this year, which led to some Turkish universities losing points." Another difference compared to previous rankings is the use of the Scopus database, where Turkish universities have limited data and non-English articles are also counted, instead of the Web of Science.
The expansion of the list means that the dominance of US and UK universities is diluted with new additions from Middle Eastern and Asian countries such as Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, Qatar, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
The methodology of the rankings is based on the key indicators of research-focused universities around the world. Institutions must have made at least 200 publications per year over the course of 5 years to be included in the list.
Rankings are based on scores in 13 parameters collected under 5 categories. The THE rankings are the only global university performance tables to judge universities across all five of their core missions.
The five categories assessed by THE are learning, research, citations, industry support and international outlook. THE officials note that while all criteria need to be balanced, the number of citations and international recognition of the university play a larger part in determining the rank of the university.
When preparing the 2015-2016 rankings, more than 100,000 pieces of data from 1128 institutions in 88 countries were assessed. The invite-only "Academic Reputation" survey was sent to more than 10,000 senior academics.
THE rankings collect the said 13 parameters under five categories whose scope and weight are provided below:
• Learning: the learning environment (worth 30%)
• Research: volume, income and reputation (worth 30%)
• Citations: research influence (worth 30%)
• Industry support: innovation (worth 2.5%)
• International outlook: staff, students and research (worth 7.5%)