Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has published the results of the annual QS University Rankings: BRICS 2018, that rates the best universities in the BRICS countries. The Rankings include universities in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The number of Russian universities included in the Rankings increased this year from 68 to 101.
Universities are assessed on the basis of eight criteria: academic reputation, reputation among employers, faculty/student ratio, proportion of academic staff members with PhDs, published articles per faculty member, number of citations per article, and the percentage of foreign employees and foreign students. Novosibirsk State University was ranked 12th making it number three among Russian universities after Lomonosov Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University.
Alexei Okunev, Pro-Rector for Development Programs at NSU, talked about the meaning of this ranking,
On the one hand, the BRICS Ranking only include a limited number of countries, but this is why we are interested in participating. All the participants have serious ambitions to enter the global education arena. Some countries have higher education competitiveness programs similar to the Russian 5-100 project. Therefore, to be in the top 20 of this rating is to be in an energized environment with very good universities who are making considerable efforts to be globally recognized.