TSU ranked among 5% of World’s Best Universities
By Mariam Chanishvili
Tuesday, September 12
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) has been named among world’s and Europe’s best universities by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018.The first-ever national university in the Caucasus was opened in 1918 laying the foundation for a European-type higher school in Georgia, based on the Georgian educational traditions.
TSU is the only university in the region on the list, ranking 301+ places among Europe’s 400 best universities. In the world ranking, the university takes the 1001+ place among the world’s more than 1,500 best universities.
“It is the only global university performance table to judge research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. We use 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments,” says Times Higher Education.
Since September 2016, the Rector of the University is a former deputy Minister of Education and Science of Georgia, Giorgi Sharvashidze, who was elected by the TSU election board in spring last year.
TSU has six faculties: Law, Economics and Business, Humanities, Medicine, Social and Political Sciences, and Exact and Natural Sciences. The International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University operates as an autonomous graduate school within the institution.
The professor and accreditation expert at the National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE), David Bostoghanashvili, says such ratings and rankings support the university’s future development.
“Different rankings are important for the university’s development process in the right direction. It is also important for the proper planning and implementation of benchmarking process,” said Bostoghanashvili.
TSU is a spiritual and intellectual successor of the multi-century Georgian culture, its humanistic traditions and old Georgian educational, scientific and cultural centers. The mission of this first Georgian university is to establish national and universal values, to promote the intellectual, moral, cultural and socio-economic development of the society, to develop the university traditions through innovative research and learning, to take care of personal and professional development of students and professors, to create, maintain and transfer knowledge, to develop basic and applied research studies.
A 21-year-old law student at TSU, Nino Khoperia, noted that in recent years the University has been trying to improve and raise its standards.
“Tbilisi State University is the first and the most successful university in Georgia and in the Caucasus. After so many years, it is still the number one choice for Georgian students and not only for them,” said Khoperia. “For me, it was the first choice because the university has the best professors, also the best law faculty in the region. For the recent years, TSU has been trying to reach higher standards by implementing reforms within the institution. Those are the reasons why it remains in 5% of the world’s best universities,” concluded Khoperia who is in her third year, Bachelor level.
The top five in the world ranking include: University of Harvard, University of Cambridge, California Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Times Higher Education is the data provider underpinning university excellence in every continent across the world. It is the leading provider of higher education data for the world's research-led institutions. The company has five decades of experience.
“Through both its content and rankings, THE has been my source of information and intelligence on how the global higher education sector is moving, and the main channel of information for me to understand the higher education and research policy landscape,” says Max Lu, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Surrey.
