2022-03-05

Russian universities may be excluded from international rankings

International agencies that form authoritative university rankings have expressed support for the Ukrainian educational and scientific community.

Russian universities may be excluded from international rankings

The Ministry of Education and Science has called on international agencies to exclude Russian educational institutions from the relevant rankings and terminate cooperation with the Russian Federation.

Yesterday a response from the Times Higher Education publishing house, which forms the university rating of the same name, was received.

Representatives of the Times Higher Education (THE) guaranteed that those Ukrainian universities that are included in any of the THE rankings will be kept in the rankings next year, regardless of the ability to submit data for an update.

At the same time, access to the profiles of Russian universities will be limited.

It is noted that the support of Ukrainian universities, their staff and students will be the topic of future summits of Times Higher Education, during which a charity fundraiser will be organized to help Ukrainian scientists affected by the war.

In addition, Times Higher Education takes steps to provide a broad and objective coverage of the war in Ukraine and its consequences for education.

Representatives of another company that forms the U-Multirank rating also announced the following decisions:

  • to delete the page “Study in Russia” in the section “Universities by country”;
  • to delete pages about Russian cities in the section “Universities by city”;
  • to exclude Russian universities from the ranking.

The responses stressed that Russia’s barbaric aggression against Ukraine fundamentally undermines the core values of higher education, which mean respect, sovereignty and peaceful international exchange.

It is suggested to take similar measures against the Republic of Belarus, which contributed to the Russian attack on Ukraine.

It should be recalled that the Ministry of Education and Science called on Clarivate and Elsevier to stop cooperation with Russia.