Warsaw University of Technology and AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow secured the first and second place in the European Ranking of Engineering Programs (EngiRank), published in Warsaw, Poland, in December. This is a pilot version of a ranking that relies on indicators important for education of engineers who are aware of the social consequences of their actions. Importantly, EngiRank is not an “extract” derived from the overall university ranking.
Prof. Krzysztof Zaremba, rector of the winner, the Warsaw University of Technology, observed “Difficult tasks in a challenging environment can be completed only if circulation of knowledge becomes a common good”, and he added “the strength of new technologies lies in crossing all kinds of barriers and borders resulting in an innovative approach to problems and development of best practices”.
The pilot ranking covers 81 higher education institutions and engineering programs in 13 countries of the so-called “New Europe”: Bulgaria, Chechia, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia. These are all countries that joined the European Union in of after 2004.
Among the top ranked 15 universities as many as 8 are from Poland. These include four universities participating in a prestigious government financed program Excellence Initiative Research University IDUB (Inicjatywa Doskonałości Uczelnia Badawcza in Polish).
In addition to Warsaw University of Technology and AGH University of Science and Technology they are Silesian University of Technology and Gdansk University of Technology. In the top twenty, along the Polish and Czech universities, there are institutions from Cyprus, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, and Romania.
Besides the overall institutional ranking, rankings “by subject” in seven discipline were also published. The “by subject” disciplines were selected following the FOS classification recommended by OECD.
The winners in the rankings by subject are: Peter Pozmany Catholic University, Hungary (Chemical Engineering), Silesian University of Technology, Poland (Civil Engineering), University of Cyprus (Electrical, Electronic & Information Engineering), AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland (Environmental Engineering), Semmelweis University, Hungary (Materials Engineering), University of Pannonia, Hungary (Mechanical Engineering) and Warsaw University of Technology, Poland (Medical Engineering).
The ranking had been initiated and produced by the “Perspektywy” Education Foundation with the support of Poland’s national Erasmus agency (FRSE) and IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence. Elsevier provided significant support in the preparation of the ranking.
The “Perspektywy” Foundation who produced the ranking has vast experience in the field of educational rankings. Over the 20 years it has published the University Ranking in Poland as well as several rankings of secondary schools..
„The mission of the European Ranking of Engineering Programs is to fill in the gap providing a current and reliable information on the engineering education in Europe” said Waldemar Siwinski, President of “Perspektywy” and Vice President of IREG Observatory – “I hope that experience gained during the work on the EngiRank, and closer cooperation with the industry will, in the near future, allow us to accomplish an ambitious project – a ranking of engineering programs in all countries of the European Union”.
An important in designing the EngiRnk played its International Council. Along professors from Belgium, France, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania, it included representatives of European organizations of engineers. The actual work on EngiRank had been preceded by consultations with representatives of the industry (Airbus, Rosatom) at the international seminars organized by IREG Observatory in Bremen, Warsaw, and Moscow.
The data for the ranking that came from the Elsevier’s Scopus, European Patent Office PATSTAT, Horizon2020, accrediting organizations for engineering studies (ABET, ENAEE, RIBA and other), and the Erasmus database.
Ranking website: www.EngiRank.eu