Ukraine's Higher Education Tops the Ranking in Eastern Europe

KYIV, Ukraine, May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Ukraine ranked higher than any other Eastern European country in the Nation Higher Education Systems rating developed by Universitas 21, the international research network of 24 universities and colleges. Ukraine occupied the 25^th position out of 48 evaluated countries. Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Russia and Slovakia placed at positions 26, 27, 28, 32, and 35, respectively

The head of the research, Professor Ross Williams, the University of Melbourne said: "Ukraine does so well because the UNESCO data shows it as having a very high ratio of government expenditure to GDP ratio, ranking equal 4th overall. This ratio jumps around a lot for Ukraine from year to year which we will investigate more in the update."

The researchers ascertained the United States of America, Sweden, Canada, Finland and Denmark to be the top five countries in the overall education rating. Eastern European countries (Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia) were in a cluster in the middle range of the list.

The researchers analyzed the most recent data from 48 countries, initially taking top 50 countries in the National Science Foundation rankings of research output in 2006-2007, adding Hong Kong and Indonesia, dropping Egypt, Pakistan, Serbia, and Tunisia. The data was examined according to 20 different criteria to find countries best at providing higher education.  All the criteria were combined under four main groups: resources, output, connectivity, and environment.

The countries ranked differently depending on different criteria. Thus, Russia, Canada, Israel, United States, Ukraine, Taiwan and Australia were named the countries with the largest proportion of workers with a higher level education. Moreover, Russia, Canada, Israel, the United States, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Australia boast the largest stocks of workers with post-secondary education. On the other hand, Ukraine scored poorly (#34) in total output of scientific articles from higher education institutions.

"In a globalized world, a strong higher education system is essential if a nation is to be economically competitive," commented the lead author of the research, Professor Ross Williams. The new research into national education sponsored by the Universitas 21 (U21) was conducted by Ross Williams, Gaetan de Rassenfosse, Paul Jensen and Simon Marginson of the University of Melbourne, Australia.