The results of the World University Ranking prepared by the international ranking agency Times Higher Education (THE-WUR) published its 21st edition today. The results confirm that the University of Padua, despite the increase in the number of universities evaluated (from 1904 in the last edition to 2092), continues to performance at a global level, placing the university within the 201-250 range globally and 4th nationally.

For its ranking, THE selects universities and ranks them based on performance indicators grouped into five areas: teaching, research productivity, research quality, technology transfer, and internationalization. The University of Padua achieves the best result in teaching, placing 194th in the world, and gains 15 positions in research, moving from 270th to 255th place.

Teaching is evaluated on factors such as the ratio between the number of female and male students who have obtained a PhD and the academic staff, funds acquired for teaching, and the ratio of teachers to students. For research, indicators consider average number of articles published per researcher, funded research project, and reputation. Research also includes the number of citations and the level of excellence in research, understood as the 10% of the best publications in its discipline. In the area of technology transfer, research funds coming from companies and registered patents are considered. Finally, in internationalization, among the various criteria, the ratio between international and national teachers is evaluated; the proportion of publications with at least one international co-author; the ratio between international and national students. The data used by the ranking agency come largely from banks and are only partly integrated with specific data provided by the selected universities.

"We are pleased with the confirmation obtained in the THE-WUR ranking, says Daniela Mapelli, Rector of the University of Padua. Our commitment has been rewarded in the field of teaching, where we are among the top 200 universities in the world for offerings and quality, in research, as the recent national record for the number of European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants projects reminds us, and in the third mission, where we have an increasingly high rate of technology transfer and connection with the local community."