Academic Centre
The results of THE rankings have been announced on 12 October. According to UNESCO data, the number of world’s registered and accredited higher education institutions reaches approximately 20 000. 1 799 universities currently meet the criteria of THE rankings, and this number has grown by 137 since the last year. In THE rankings, UL ranks 800th–1000th. Among the higher education institutions of the Baltic states, the University of Tartu is ranked the highest (251st–300th). The University of Vilnius and the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences share the same group as UL – 801st–1000th.
THE rankings represent the world's best universities, evaluating their performance according to five indicators – teaching, research, citations of scientific articles, international outlook and industry income. UL also ranks highly in cooperation with industry and international outlook.
"The high result in research asserts our advancement toward strategic goal set by the UL – the position of internationally recognised research university. The assessment of international outlook and cooperation with industry likewise clearly shows that our research activity is integrated into the development processes of society. However, this year's performance of the UL and the higher education institutions of the other Baltic countries confirms that the international competition in our case truly resembles the principle conveyed by Alice in Wonderland – it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place, whereas to overtake universities whose budgets far exceed ours, we must run at least twice as fast as that – the financing of Latvian higher education institutions must be significantly increased, both for studies and research", says UL Rector, Professor Indriķis Muižnieks.
The highest result in THE World University Rankings has been achieved by Oxford University (Great Britain), Harvard University (USA) is in the 2nd place, whereas two higher education institutions – Cambridge University (Great Britain) and Stanford University (USA) – share the 3rd place.
Times Higher Education World University Rankings are amongst the world's three most influential university rankings, published for the 18th year. This year, THE rankings evaluate universities from more than 104 countries of the world, using information on scientific achievements from the SCOPUS publication base, as well as the information provided by higher education institutions and information obtained from surveys. THE Rankings provide a broad and balanced comparison of higher education institutions in the assessment of students, academics, heads of universities, industry and state administration. The results of THE Rankings were released on 12 October.
 amongst the highest-ranking universities in research. According to this indicator, UL has the high 482nd result.){kind=link}