The Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Faculty of Education and Psychology welcomed three leading ranking experts for a two-day visit in Budapest. The idea of this event comes from the research of the ELTE’s Social Communication Research Group, which carries out a special project analysing rankings on the academic level and implementing these in the practice of higher education management. The ELTE, one of the flagships of the Hungarian higher education, for the improvement of international positions of other universities too, considered it important to organise a meeting for Hungarian university representatives and ranking experts.
The three guests are important figures of the international ranking world and members of the Executive Committee of IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence: Waldemar Siwinski is Vice President of IREG, Gero Federkeil has been responsible for coordinating the U-Multirank ranking, Dmitry Grishankov is the General Director of the International Group of rating agencies “Expert RA”.
After some meetings with ELTE-leaders, Thursday afternoon they had a two-hour workshop with the representatives of seven Hungarian research universities with the following goals: to present the changes of global rankings to the Hungarian universities in the light of the ranking experts’ experiences; to present the ranking strategies, particularities, ideas of Hungarian institutions of higher education to global ranking creators and experts; to support the international positions of Hungarian/Eastern European universities.
György Fábri, chairman of the Research Group and the ranking project, who planned and organised the whole program, started with a presentation that showed their recent activities, such as a monograph about the ranking-phenomenon, a professional website which monitors and analyses global and national rankings, and the preparation of an international ranking-conference in Budapest. Mr Siwinski’s presentation showed the changes in the ranking landscape during the last years. These days there are more and more universities, regions and subjects featured in the different rankings. Mr Federkeil talked about the working and methodology of U-Multirank. It is not a league table, more of a transparency tool that provides benchmarking options and makes the diversity of universities visible to students and others so they can make an informed choice about where to apply. Mr Grishankov presented the Moscow International Ranking, emphasising the importance of universities’ „Third Mission”.
The discussion with the representative members of the Hungarian universities covered several topics, such as the importance of regional rankings – while Hungarian universities are not presented among the top of the world, they do have good results compared to our neighbours. There were also remarks about the reputation measures that are not always clear enough, and the ways ranking business is sustained. Several questions were raised about the methodology of the U-Multirank and Moscow International Ranking. Thursday evening the experts had an informal dinner with Hungarian ranking researchers.
On Friday the IREG leaders met with László Palkovics Ministry for Higher Education. Professor Palkovics explained that the Hungarian higher education policy closely monitors global rankings. On one hand, it considers it important to get feedback on the performance of universities, and on the other hand they serve as a useful marketing tool in international higher education as well. That is why it is important to know the contents of the rankings, the meaning of the indicators and the trends. He agreed that the regional rankings and those of the subject fields became increasingly important. László Palkovics welcomed the idea of a conference in Budapest for next year.
Dr. habil György Fábri (1964) is an habilitated associate professor (Institute of research on Adult Education and Knowledge Management, Faculty of Education and Psychology of Eötvös Loránd University), head of the Social Communication Research Group. Areas of research: university philosophy, sociology of higher education and science, science communication, social communication, church sociology. His monograph was published on the transformation of Hungarian higher education during the change of regime (1992 Wien) and on university rankings (2017 Budapest). He has edited several scientific journals, and his university courses and publications cover communication theory, university philosophy, science communication, social representation, media and social philosophy, ethics, and church sociology.
Dr. Mircea Dumitru is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest (since 2004). Rector of the University of Bucharest (since 2011). President of the European Society of Analytic Philosophy (2011 – 2014). Corresponding Fellow of the Romanian Academy (since 2014). Minister of Education and Scientific Research (July 2016 – January 2017). Visiting Professor at Beijing Normal University (2017 – 2022). President of the International Institute of Philosophy (2017 – 2020). President of Balkan Universities Association (2019 – 2020). He holds a PhD in Philosophy at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA (1998) with a topic in modal logic and philosophy of mathematics, and another PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bucharest (1998) with a topic in philosophy of language. Invited Professor at Tulsa University (USA), CUNY (USA), NYU (USA), Lyon 3, ENS Lyon, University of Helsinki, CUPL (Beijing, China), Pekin University (Beijing, China). Main area of research: philosophical logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. Main publications: Modality and Incompleteness (UMI, Ann Arbor, 1998); Modalitate si incompletitudine, (Paideia Publishing House, 2001, in Romanian; the book received the Mircea Florian Prize of the Romanian Academy); Logic and Philosophical Explorations (Humanitas, Bucharest, 2004, in Romanian); Words, Theories, and Things. Quine in Focus (ed.) (Pelican, 2009); Truth (ed.) (Bucharest University Publishing House, 2013); article on the Philosophy of Kit Fine, in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, the Third Edition, Robert Audi (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality. Themes from Kit Fine (ed.) (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Mr. Degli Esposti is Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Deputy Rector Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Dean of Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, Head of Service for the health and safety of people in the workplace, President of the Alma Mater Foundation and Delegate for Rankings.
Ben joined QS in 2002 and has led institutional performance insights function of QS since its emergence following the early success of the QS World University Rankings®. His team is, today, responsible for the operational management of all major QS research projects including the QS World University Rankings® and variants by region and subject. Comprising over 60 people in five international locations, the team also operate a widely adopted university rating system – QS Stars – and a range of commissioned business intelligence and strategic advisory services.Ben has travelled to over 50 countries and spoken on his research in almost 40. He has personally visited over 50 of the world’s top 100 universities amongst countless others and is a regular and sought after speaker on the conference circuit.Ben is married and has two sons; if he had any free time it would be spent reading, watching movies and skiing.
Anna Urbanovics is a PhD student at Doctoral School of Public Administration Sciences of the University of Public Service, and studies Sociology Master of Arts at the Corvinus University of Budapest. She is graduated in International Security Studies Master of Arts at the University of Public Service. She does research in Scientometrics and International Relations.
Since 1 February 2019 Minister Palkovics as Government Commissioner has been responsible for the coordination of the tasks prescribed in Act XXIV of 2016 on the promulgation of the Agreement between the Government of Hungary and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the development, implementation and financing of the Hungarian section of the Budapest-Belgrade Railway Reconstruction Project.
He is the past President of the Health and Health Care Economics Section of the Hungarian Economics Association.
Based in Berlin, Zuzanna Gorenstein is Head of Project of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) service project “International University Rankings” since 2019. Her work at HRK encompasses the conceptual development and implementation of targeted advisory, networking, and communication measures for German universities’ ranking officers. Before joining the HRK, Zuzanna Gorenstein herself served as ranking officer of Freie Universität Berlin.
His books on mathematical modeling of chemical, biological, and other complex systems have been published by Princeton University Press, MIT Press, Springer Publishing house. His new book RANKING: The Unwritten Rules of the Social Game We All Play was published recently by the Oxford University Press, and is already under translation for several languages.
