St Petersburg University is ranked first in St Petersburg and is among the world’s top 40 universities in ‘The Three University Missions’ international ranking

The global ranking ‘The Three University Missions’ is considered one of the largest in the world. Despite the annual increase in the number of participants, St Petersburg University is only improving its position. This year, 1,650 universities have taken part in the ranking. The list of the top higher education institutions includes universities from 97 countries including 112 Russian universities. Lomonosov Moscow State University and St Petersburg University are consistently top Russian universities in the ranking.

As to the universities in St Petersburg, in addition to St Petersburg University, among the world’s top 1,000 universities are: ITMO University (270^th place); Pavlov First St

Petersburg State Medical University (the 501-550 group); St Petersburg Electrotechnical University (LETI) (the 601-650 group); and St Petersburg State Paediatric Medical University (the 701-800 group).

The results of the ranking ‘The Three University Missions’ along with the other world rankings officially recognised in the Russian Federation are actively used at St Petersburg University. They are taken into account when: transferring to the University for the graduate course; recognising periods of studies and results of completed online courses; and selecting academic mobility programmes and experts for Dissertation Councils formed according to the rules established at St Petersburg University (for each defence).

The coronavirus pandemic has put the education system to the test. The way universities cope with it seriously affects their performance in the world rankings.

Nikolay Kropachev, Rector of St Petersburg University

‘In this difficult situation, St Petersburg University has managed not only to maintain a high level of education and research, but also to increase it. Over the past few years, we have paid great attention to the development of digital technologies. Thanks to this, the

University staff and students quickly adapted to the changed formats of education and work. Also, the digitalisation of the University has significantly affected its transparency. Due to the use of technology, we have made all the processes transparent: from the admission of applicants to the thesis defences,’ said Nikolay Kropachev, Rector of St Petersburg University.

The Moscow International University Ranking (MosIUR) assesses the three key missions of the university: education; research; and interaction with society. To compile the ranking, exclusively objective criteria and information from independent international sources are used: Clarivate Analytics; the leading Massive open online courses; publicly available multilingual universal encyclopaedia ‘Wikipedia’; global search engines; social media; and websites of international student Olympiads and science awards from the IREG List of International Academic Awards to name just a few. Experts also use open data from the official websites of universities and national authorities.

The compilation of the ranking ‘The Three University Missions’ was initiated by the

Russian Union of Rectors in accordance with the instructions of the President of the Russian

Federation Vladimir Putin. The operator of the ranking is the Association of Compilers of Ratings, Rankings and Other Performance Evaluations (ACR), the members of which are leading ranking and research centers. In 2018, the ranking successfully passed an independent audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, part of PwC’s global network. The project is supported by Clarivate Analytics, a provider of data and metrics from InCites and Global Institutional Profiles Project (GIPP).