“Hungary must make progress in university rankings” – can the Chinese university help?
The government wants Hungary to make progress in university rankings, the minister of innovation and technology said on Wednesday.
László Palkovics said in a video message for an online international conference organised by Budapest’s Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE) and International Ranking Expert Group that the quality of universities was very important, as reflected by rankings.
He said Hungary had given
many famous scientists to the world
who have made great contributions to the development of science. Since 2016, ELTE has been running a research team assessing university rankings, he said.
Commenting on the structure of the Hungarian economy, Palkovics said the current proportion of small enterprises was not satisfactory. At the same time, Hungary performs surprisingly well in state-of-the-art technologies, he added.
Hungary is
internationally considered a location worth investing
in and the government is making good progress in making Hungary increasingly attractive for research and development, he said. He added that it was important to make Hungary’s higher education sector more international and to attract foreign universities.
Cooperation was started with
China’s Fudan University in 2014 and the university will set up its first campus outside China in Budapest,
he said.
- It’s over! Chinese Fudan project is off the table, says Budapest mayor
- Orbán cabinet signs strategic deal with China’s Fudan University
Source: MTI
University Rankings use aa methodology that examine a number of areas, the key ones being (in order of weight attached): 1/ Teaching – the learning environment. 2/ Research – measured by a reputation survey, which shows how university research is perceived by academic peers; research income, which indicates the importance and quality of research; and research productivity, which indicates how much high-quality research is published by academics at the institution. 3/ Citations – research influence, In the rankings, the research influence of a university is measured by the number of times that work by an academic at that university is cited by another scholar. 4/ Industry income – the commercial impact of an institution’s research, which is itself a reflection of the industrial value of the research. 5/ International outlook – It is measured by three indicators: international to domestic student ratio, international to domestic staff ratio, and the proportion of research that involves international collaboration. 6/ The Subject rankings – 11 individual subject rankings allowing students to delve deeper across different disciplines: Arts and Humanities; Clinical, Pre-clinical and Health; Engineering and Technology; Life Sciences; Physical Sciences; Social Sciences; Law; Psychology; Education; Computer Science and Business and Economics.
While it is the case that the Fudan University in Shanghai has 34th place in the QS world rankings, much of that is due to its geographical location, a truly global city attracting top talent from around the world and in particular Asia and the East. It is hard to envision a much smaller campus outpost in a city and country that in comparison to Shanghai is provincial, having much impact upon the currently poor ranking QS rankings of Hungarian universities. Palkovics is just pumping out government propaganda, there is no substance to his assertions – in fact they are rather laughable.
We keep hearing on the news how great Hungarians are in their science and inventions. We forget that these people were a product of what Hangary WAS before Communism brainwashed their minds and destroyed their culture. And now you say that this same Comunist system will elivate the status of the Universities. This just shows how devastating this period really was and how hard it is going to be to bring back our culture. I really question their status – its BOGUS just like their system.