Abdukodir Toshkulov: Our following task is to achieve quality in education

Exactly 2 months later, 8 leading higher education institutions of the republic took a worthy place in the list of TOP-1000. This is a practical proof of changes in the quality of education.

Today, raising the quality of a higher education institution, ensuring its competitiveness in the international arena, as well as taking a worthy place among the top universities of the world, is undoubtedly directly related to its active participation in international rankings.

In the concept of development of the higher education system of our country until 2030, at least 10 higher education institutions in the republic are included in the list of higher education institutions in the first 1000 places of the ranking of internationally recognized agencies, namely Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, Times Higher Education, Academic Ranking of World Universities. In addition, the 47th goal of the State Program, approved by the presidential decree No. 60 of the Republic of Uzbekistan, envisages the preparation of 10 potential higher education institutions to enter the QS and TNE international ratings by 2026.

A number of activities are being carried out by the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education for timely and quality performance of these tasks.

 
The result of the reforms carried out in recent years can be seen in the fact that higher education institutions occupy a worthy place in prestigious international rankings. In particular, on November 8, the results of the QS Asia University Rankings-2023 (Asia university ranking) were announced. This ranking evaluates the universities of the countries of East, Southeast and Central Asia around the world in terms of academic standing, index among employers, student-to-faculty ratio, professors and teachers with academic degrees, number of international students, international diversity and citations.

A total of 760 universities from 23 countries participated in the rating, and 8 higher education institutions of our republic took a worthy place among them. Fortunately, the National Research University “TIIAME” and the National University of Uzbekistan were among the top 500 universities.
 
Also, we are witnessing that the higher education institutions of our republic are improving their positions in the most prestigious “World University Rankings” of the Times Higher Education organization, that is, HEIs of our republic are improving their positions even in the ranking of TOP-1000 universities. For example, in 2021, 10 of Uzbekistan’s higher education institutions were considered as candidates for this rating, and in 2022, this list increased almost 3 times to 28. Today, systematic work is underway to include several higher educational institutions in this list among the TOP-1000.

In addition, as a result of close work with QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), one of the most prestigious international rating organizations of Great Britain, in 2021, for the first time in the rating of developing countries of Europe and Central Asia, 4 higher education institutions of Uzbekistan, and in the current year, in the “Subject Rankings” of world universities conducted by the international rating agency QS, the National University of Uzbekistan was ranked among the world’s top 500 (451-500 places) in the field of “Mathematics”.

This organization also announced the “QS Stars” rating results recently. According to it, Tashkent State Law University was one of the first higher education institutions of Uzbekistan to be rated as a 4-star university.

It should be noted that higher education institutions are actively participating in the ratings of other organizations, not limited to the ratings of QS and THE organizations.

For example, WURI (World’s Universities with Real Impact) international rating is a global rating organized by the most prestigious universities of the USA, Asia, Europe and Africa. It is an organization that evaluates the number of the most qualitative and useful scientific and innovative projects in world universities and their impact on society and higher education institutions.

The WURI rating evaluates universities by the best innovative projects in 6 areas. These are industrial programs, new start-up programs and entrepreneurship, moral values, student mobility and activity, crisis management and the fourth industrial revolution.

According to the results of this rating published for 2022, Tashkent State Law University (33rd place) and National University of Uzbekistan (38th place) entered the TOP-50 list in the field of Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The importance of the indicators in these ratings is that, firstly, it allows to attract more foreign students and professors to the universities of our country, and secondly, it creates an opportunity for educational institutions to compete with prestigious universities in the world educational arena.

It is no exaggeration to say that these and other achieved results are reliable steps towards achieving the above-mentioned main task.

We believe that in the coming years, several higher education institutions in our country will achieve a worthy place in the world ranking.