Universities of Kazakhstan in the spotlight of the Times Higher Education international ranking

On February 16, a master class «Kazakhstan in the spotlight - Times Higher Education World University Rankings» was held for the universities of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in which a group of employees of KazNPU named after Abai, headed by Vice-Rector for Strategy, digitalization and internationalization Kulsariyeva A.T.

The master class was held on the basis of KBTU in the Independence Hall, where more than 30 years ago proclaimed the independence of Kazakhstan. Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan Sayasat Nurbek addressed the audience with a welcoming speech. He highlighted that participation in international rankings is important in order to see common perspective in the field of higher education, monitoring global trends, determine the current position of universities and the direction of further development.

The following issues were considered during the master class: updated criteria of THE WUR global rating, the position of universities of the Republic of Kazakhstan in THE Impact, as well as the initiative of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education to create a national university rating based on THE Dashboard Government platform.

The specifics of the methodology of THE WUR are outlined in a speech by Phil Batey, Director of Global Relations at THE. In particular, he noted that the weights on the indicators of the global rating of THE WUR have changed, while the traditional focus on «Research» has intensified. Thus, the percentage is distributed according to the following key criteria:
- RESEARCH/ Research - 30%.
- TEACHING/ Training - 30%.
- INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK/ International interactions, talent attraction - 7.5%.

Thus, the evaluation of the research area of the university gives 67.5% of the total.

The second issue was mentioned by Lachin Italmazova, Regional Director of THE. THE Impact has a different methodology for evaluating Research, taking into account the number of clicks and downloads of articles related to the SDGs. It should be noted, that Abai University holds first line in the Republic of Kazakhstan with a position of 601-800 in the rating of THE Impact. Also, L. Italmazova during the discussion gave an explanation regarding the status of «Reporter» in the rating of THE WUR. In order to get into the ranked list and get out of the REPORTER status, publication activity and citations indexed by the SCOPUS database must be at least 1,000 publications over the past 5 years, with at least 150 publications annually over the past 3 years.

On the third issue, the the Ministry of Science and Higher Education took the initiative and launched a pilot project to create a national rating of universities of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This rating will be developed on the THE - Dashboard Government platform based on the indicators of THE. Today, the UAE and Uzbekistan cooperate with THE. In the near future, within the framework of the pilot project, universities of the Republic of Kazakhstan will have to enter actual data on the portal. These data will be analyzed by the analytical group THE and the full perspective of the universities of our country will be presented to the MSHE (Ministry of Science and Higher Education) RK.