Historic Success from Turkish Universities

In the 2024 World University Rankings of Times Higher Education (THE), the international higher education rating organization, three Turkish universities made it to the top 400 and 11 Turkish universities made it to the top 1000.

75 Turkish universities made it to the list. Türkiye became the 7th most represented country in the world.

CoHE President Özvar: "The increasing success of our universities, especially in the last two years, started to be seen in international rankings."

"It is very valuable that for the first time, three Turkish universities ranked between 351-400 and one of our universities ranked in the 501-600 range."

"It is quite pleasing that a record number of Turkish universities have found a place in the rankings and risen towards the top."

"We are developing strategies for our universities to help them ranked among the world's top 100 universities."

Phil Baty, Global Director at THE: " Türkiye is the seventh best-represented country in the rankings, behind giants such as the US, India and China. Türkiye is rapidly emerging as an international center of higher education."

September 28, 2023

Times Higher Education (THE), the UK-based international higher education rating organization, announced the results of the 2024 World University Rankings. 75 universities from Türkiye succeeded in entering the ranking and Türkiye became the 7th best represented country in the world. Last year, 61 Turkish universities were included in this ranking.

In the list of 1,904 universities from 108 countries, Koç University, METU and Sabancı University managed to enter the top 400 with a ranking in the 301-400 range.

ITU ranked 501-600; Bilkent University, Boğaziçi University, Çankaya University and Hacettepe University ranked 601-800; and Bahçeşehir University, Özyeğin University and Yıldız Technical University ranked 801-1000. Thus, 11 Turkish universities have achieved a remarkable success by entering the top 1,000 in THE rankings. Apart from the 11 Turkish higher education institutions that entered the top 1,000 in THE ranking, 24 Turkish universities were positioned in the 1001-1500 range.

CoHE President Erol Özvar stated that he appreciated the success of Turkish universities in international rankings and said, "The increasing success of our universities, especially in the last two years, has started to be seen in international rankings. It is quite pleasing that a record number of our universities have found a place in the rankings and risen towards the top. It is very valuable that for the first time, three Turkish universities ranked between 351-400 and one of our universities ranked in the 501-600 band."

He stated that their main goal was to further increase the quality of education, training and research outputs and added: "We are developing strategies for our universities to help them ranked among the top 100 universities in the world."

Özvar said, "We firmly believe that our universities will increase their quality and succeed as long as they focus on these goals. I would like to emphasize once again that the Council of Higher Education attaches great importance to internationalization. The Council has taken remarkable steps in this direction in recent years. I believe that there is no reason why Türkiye cannot be represented in international rankings with more universities and reach higher positions in the coming years if they focus on internationalization and increase academic productivity and research quality."

"The parallels between our research university ranking and the rankings of the rating agencies show that we evaluate our universities with a proper method. For the past two years, we have been guiding the implementation of many projects, especially the big data project, by our universities as a strategic goal to increase the international visibility of our universities. We are currently reaping the rewards of these efforts.

Under the leadership of the Council of Higher Education, special working groups were established to increase the international interaction of our universities and to move them up the rankings.

For more than two years, we have been working in full coordination with university administrations to ensure that university management and functioning are built on academic performance and productivity. We are implementing all our administrative, staffing and incentive policies based on this strategy."

-THE Global Director Praises Turkish Higher Education

Phil Baty, Global Director at THE, stated that he is pleased to share that Türkiye is one of the best-represented countries in the world rankings.

He noted that Türkiye was the seventh best-represented country among giants such as the USA, India and China, and said: "This is a remarkable sign of Türkiye's rapid rise as an international higher education hub and the desire of Turkish universities to take their place on the world stage with their will to compare themselves with the best universities in the world."

He pointed out that Türkiye currently host 2.9 percent of the world's international students, according to UNESCO's Institute for Statistics, and said, "I believe that Türkiye will be among the top 10 countries with the highest number of international students in the world in a relatively short period of time."

He emphasized that Türkiye was on the rise in all categories and added, "Türkiye has a very positive upward trend in terms of key metrics. It shows a steady and strong improvement in internationalization and global competitiveness. This is a special achievement."

-Özvar's Letter to Journalists-

CoHE President Erol Özvar commented on THE's rankings in a letter sent to some journalists.

"I would like to update you on the significant success of Turkish higher education this year. The world-renowned Times Higher Education (THE), an international organization based in the United Kingdom, announced the results of the 2024 World University Rankings yesterday. Since 2004, THE has been selecting the best universities in the world, and 75 universities from Türkiye took part in the 2024 ranking. With this number of universities, Türkiye has become the 7th best represented country after the USA (169), Japan (119), the United Kingdom (104), India (91), China (86) and Russia (78). This year's THE results, which include 1,904 universities from 108 countries, show that Türkiye's representation in the list has increased by 23% compared to last year (61 universities) and tripled compared to 2018. THE, which has been ranking world universities for the last two decades, has expanded its 13 evaluation indicators such as education, research, scientific citation, university income and international outlook to 17 this year. In this context, it introduced additional indicators such as research quality, number of patents, and for the first time measured the proportion of international students and academics comparable to the size of countries.

In the THE ranking, which includes 75 universities from Türkiye, Koç University, METU and Sabancı University were ranked in the 351-400 range, placing them among the world's top 500 universities. On the other hand, Istanbul Technical University ranked 501-600; Bilkent University, Boğaziçi University, Çankaya University and Hacettepe University ranked 601-800; Bahçeşehir University, Özyeğin University and Yıldız Technical University ranked 801-1000. Therefore, a remarkable success was achieved as 11 Turkish universities entered the top 1,000 in THE rankings.

Apart from the 11 higher education institutions in the top 1,000 in the THE ranking, 24 universities are positioned in the 1001-1500 range. The remaining 40 universities are in the 1501-1904 range.

We are happy to see that our efforts to increase quality in higher education have yielded results. The results of THE, which has a remarkable place among international ranking organizations, indicate that a large number of our universities have joined this race, and that most of our universities that were listed in the previous rankings have maintained their current positions or moved to a higher range. For example, three Turkish universities that are listed in the 351-400 range and entered the top 500 have moved up from the lower (401-500 or 501-600) ranges. All but two of eight universities in the 501-1000 range either maintained or increased their ranks. Similarly, only 5 out of 24 universities in the 1001-1500 range saw a limited decrease in their ranking.

The 2024 THE results are also important in terms of showing the strengths and weaknesses of our higher education institutions. In this framework, between 2018 and 2024, Turkish universities increased their self-generated income by 14%, the proportion of PhD holders among university employees by 9%, and the number of international students by 5.13%. On the other hand, the proportion of doctoral students among the total number of graduate students decreased by 13%. We believe that this decline is due to the rapid increase in the number of master's degree programs and the number of students enrolled in these programs.

As the Council of Higher Education, we appreciate the success of our universities in international rankings. However, we see it as our main goal to further increase the quality of education, training and research outputs. We firmly believe that as long as our universities focus on these goals, they will increase their quality and achieve success. I would also like to emphasize once again that the Council of Higher Education attaches great importance to internationalization. The Council has taken remarkable steps in this direction in recent years. I believe that there is no reason why Türkiye cannot be represented in international rankings with more universities and reach higher positions in the coming years if they focus on internationalization and increase academic productivity and research quality."