Russian Universities Lead 2016 Rankings for EECA Region

The third edition of the QS University Rankings: Emerging Europe and Central Asia, released today, sees three Russian universities at the top. Lomonosov Moscow State University and Novosibirsk State University come first and second respectively – maintaining their positions from last year. Saint-Petersburg State University climbs from fifth to third place, completing the trio of table-topping Russian universities.

First published in 2014, the ranking has this year been extended to feature the top 200 (previously 150) institutions in Emerging Europe and Central Asia (EECA). It aims to celebrate and track the strengths of universities across this region, as a growing number of EECA countries invest in developing and internationalizing their higher education systems.

As well as dominating at the very top, Russian universities account for 64 of the 200 institutions ranked – far more than any other nation. However, the table is in fact much more diverse than this may suggest. The top 10 features leading institutions from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Turkey, and a total of 21 nations are represented overall.

Following Russia, Turkey is the second most-represented country in the ranking, with 20 universities featured. Next is Kazakhstan with 18 representatives, followed by Poland (15), Ukraine (14), Czech Republic (12) and Romania (11).

The ranking assesses universities using nine performance indicators, reflecting academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, research publications, citations per paper, online impact, proportion of staff with a PhD, and proportion of international staff and students. The full methodology can be reviewed here, and the published ranking can be sorted to show the results in each of these nine categories.