A Brief Review of THE 2022 Rankings

As in previous years, the higher education rating agency Times Higher Education (THE) ranks universities according to the criteria of teaching quality, research, publications and citations, industry income and international visibility. THE 2022 World University Rankings are made by evaluating the 2018-2019 academic year data of universities. While Hacettepe University was in the range of 501-600 in the 2021 THE World Universities Rankings last year, it could not maintain this position and declined to the range of 601-800 in 2022.

While 1526 universities from 93 countries were included in the THE rankings in 2021, 1662 universities from 99 countries were included in the rankings in 2022. In addition, 452 more universities were listed with “reporter” status, meaning they provided data but failed to meet eligibility criteria for ranking. While the number of universities that managed to enter the rankings throughout Turkey increased from 43 to 54 this year, Hacettepe University ranked first in Turkey after three private foundation universities, İ.D. Bilkent managed to rank 3rd with ITU and METU. While it was observed that the increase in the number of universities from Turkey that entered the ranking continued, 12 Turkish universities listed as rapporteurs could not be included in the ranking.
 
In the 2022 performance summary of Hacettepe University, which is ranked in the range of 601-800 in THE 2022 World Universities Rankings, its strong point is the scientific citation effect criterion, and its weak point is the international appearance criterion, which is measured by the number of international students and faculty members. Considering the citations, Hacettepe University could not maintain its success in the previous year, falling from the 344th place to the 577th place in the world (the score decreased from 73.7 to 61.1 points), and ranked 3rd among the universities in Turkey after Çankaya and Istanbul Medeniyet universities. Due to the fact that the language of instruction is Turkish in many of our departments, the Internationalization score (24.3) continued to decline, especially due to the decrease in the number of international faculty members and students in recent years.
 
Improvements in the Industry Revenues criteria, which cause the increase in the citation score, internationalization and other low rankings, will be the main key for Hacettepe University to be in the top 500 in the world rankings for the coming years.