“Several Hungarian universities were placed in the top rankings published by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) a few days ago. The government’s goal is for young Hungarians to be the winners of the future, and for this to become reality it is essential that higher education is competitive at international level”, the Ministry for Innovation and Technology’s Deputy Minister and Parliamentary and Strategic State Secretary Tamás Schanda declared on his public media page, where he also took the opportunity to congratulate the institutions on receiving the acknowledgement.
The government’s goal is the development of a continuously evolving higher education system that conforms to the challenges of the age and to the requirements of the economy and society, and which strives to achieve world class standards. It is as a result of these efforts that Hungarian universities have achieved distinguished scores in yet another international ranking. In 2020, several Hungarian universities specialising in sciences were included in the list of top universities issued by the ARWU, which has been published since 2003.
International rankings offer an easy method of comparing the excellence of universities. The ARWU rankings evaluate a total of 54 fields within the life sciences, natural sciences, technological sciences, medical sciences and social sciences categories, and of the 4000 universities examined during this year’s evaluation, 1800 institutions from 90 countries were eventually included in the list of the world’s top 500 universities.
In this ranking, the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and the Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE) placed 401-500 within the field of mathematics, while ELTE as ranked 151-200, the University of Debrecen placed 301-400, and the University of Szeged was ranked 401-500 within the field of physics. Within the field of biology, ELTE and the Semmelweis University came in joint 301-400. Semmelweis University also finished in the 401-500 category within the field of human biology. In addition, ELTE was also ranked 301-400 within the fields of ecology and meteorology, maintaining its rankings from last year.
Within the field of medical science, the Szent István University and the University of Veterinary Science was ranked 201-300, while the Semmelweis University was ranked 201-300 within the field of clinical medical science, and the University Szeged and the University of Pécs were placed 401-500. Semmelweis University was ranked 201-300 within the field of medical technology, in addition to which Semmelweis University was also placed 401-500 within the field of pharmacology. Corvinus University was ranked 401-500 within the field of economics and 301-400 within the field of political sciences, and ELTE was ranked 301-400 within the field of psychology.
These results also prove that Hungarian universities have been performing increasingly well over the past ten years, and are giving people increasingly competitive degrees. Hungarian higher education institutions are also becoming increasingly popular among foreign students, as indicated by the fact that the number of foreign students has increased by over fifty percent during the past four years.