ChineseQS World Rankings: SZE joins the list of top Hungarian universities
As in the previous year, Széchenyi István University is once again in the top four percent of the world's universities in the latest World University Rankings from QS, the higher education rating organisation. According to the rankings, the institution has caught up with the major Hungarian universities: it ranks only behind ELTE and the universities with faculties of medicine - Szeged, Debrecen and Pécs. The University owes its success primarily to the quality of its teaching, its excellent corporate and academic reputation and its growing international student community.
QS, one of the two largest international university rating organisations, publishes its current world rankings in June each year. The most recent ranking was published on Wednesday and, as last year, it includes Széchenyi István University, ranked at position 801-1000. The prestige of the ranking is reflected in the fact that the front-runners include such renowned universities as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Stanford, Oxford and Harvard.
Students at Széchenyi István University enjoy an international infrastructure, beautiful surroundings and high quality education.
Dr Eszter Lukács, Vice-Rector for International Affairs, pointed out that Széchenyi István University has achieved this excellent ranking out of more than 25,000 universities worldwide, which means that it continues to be in the top four percent of universities in the world.
However, this result represents a step forward from the point of view that, whereas 1,300 institutions were ranked in last year's list, there are more than 1,400 in this year's list, meaning that the excellent ranking has been maintained in a more competitive environment than before.
Dr Lukács said: "Analysing the detailed data, we can see that the ranking of Széchenyi István University is mainly due to its excellent corporate and academic reputation, its very good student-teacher ratio, an indicator of quality education, and its growing international community.
In recent years, the institution has been regularly included in the QS regional list of Eastern Europe-Central Asia, where it was ranked 150th, 23 places higher than in the previous year.
"We are extremely proud of this achievement, which is important for us because our strategic goal is to increase our global visibility and attract more international students. Young people from abroad who live in our primary target areas - Western Europe, East and South-East Asia - pay close attention to which universities are on the QS list. So it is a mutually reinforcing process: our growing international community is improving our world ranking, and more and more young people from other countries want to study with us," said Dr Lukács, adding that Széchenyi István University now has almost 800 international students from 65 countries around the world. The number of English-language courses is close to 40.
The Vice Rector also pointed out that QS rankings are also important because the government has set it as an indicator for universities with the model change, in order to award extra funding to encourage the qualitative development of higher education.
"Széchenyi István University’s result is a guarantee for students that they can acquire up-to-date knowledge and competitive degrees of international quality, which are valuable in the labour market. We are extremely proud of this and will do our utmost to achieve an even higher ranking in the coming years," said Dr Lukács.
Széchenyi István University also owes its excellent ranking to its growing international community.
