METU ranks first among Research Universities for five years

Once again, Middle East Technical University has ranked first in the “Research Universities Performance Monitoring Index,” which evaluates the performances of the universities included in the “Mission Differentiation and Specialization on the Basis of Research Program” carried out by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK). In the list that has been annually announced for the last five years, METU has retained its position with 85.87 points according to the evaluation results of the performances in the year 2021, and thus ranked first for the fifth time consecutively since 2017.

This year’s ranking was announced on November 18, 2022, at the YÖK Research Universities Meeting held in Elazığ. Details of the evaluation process were shared with the participants including the presidents of 23 research universities at the meeting, which was hosted by Fırat University and presided over by Prof. Erol Özvar, the President of YÖK. In the 2021 ranking, in which research universities were evaluated according to 32 indicators under the titles “Research Capacity,” “Research Quality,” and “Interaction and Cooperation,” METU received the highest score once again.

With the new regulations made by YÖK last year in the Mission Differentiation and Specialization on the Basis of Research Program, research universities were divided into three performance groups as A1, A2, and A3, and for the first time, some foundation universities were granted the “research university” status, as well. Therefore, the performances of these foundation universities were included in this year’s ranking for the first time. According to the results, METU was included in the group A1 (universities with high-level research performance) like it was last year. In the group A1 that consisted of six universities, the total score gap between METU and the other universities is more than 15 points. This year, Middle East Technical University increased its score to 85.87, while the score that placed METU at the top of the list last year was 85.40.

There were various minor changes in the weight distribution of three main titles in the 2022 performance ranking, which was created with the data of the year 2021. The “Research Capacity” title, which used to constitute 25% of the total score, had an effect of 40% this year, while the impact of the “Interaction and Cooperation” title decreased from 35% to 20%. Like in the previous years, Middle East Technical University once again received the highest scores in all three titles.

At the meeting, Prof. Erol Özvar stated that based on the “Annual Performance Ranking of Research Universities” prepared with the reports requested from universities every year, a total budget of 100 million TL was distributed to 20 research universities by the Presidency of Strategy and Budget in June this year, and he noted that the budget distribution of the year 2023 would be made based on the performance ranking in 2022.

Ranking of Research Universities in Group A1