The European Rankings of Engineering Programmes EngiRank fills a gap in current and trustworthy information on engineering education, as well as research and innovation, in European universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs)[1] with a strong engineering profile.

 

Our main concern in developing EngiRank was to ensure the highest reliability of the rankings. The geographical scope of EngiRank covers the European Union, Norway and Switzerland. One of the reasons for this coverage of the rankings is related to the right of EU citizens to study in other Member States under the same conditions as nationals, and the promotion of student mobility and graduate employability are the key objectives of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), which extends beyond the EU. Increased student mobility creates a demand for information on the quality of European higher education institutions. In addition, consortia of institutions from different Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries can apply for research and innovation funding under the Horizon Europe programmes. The European Universities Initiative, launched in 2017, develops long-term cooperation between European higher education institutions. These measures are levelling the playing field for higher education institutions across the European Union and making comparisons between them more meaningful.

 

Another factor considered essential for the credibility of the EngiRank is the quality and reliability of the data – the rankings are based only on trustworthy external databases containing information on European HEIs collected in a uniform way, such as the Scopus bibliographic database, the EPO Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT), information on participation in European Commission initiatives (Community Research and Development Information Service - CORDIS, European Education Area website), databases of programmes accredited by quality assurance agencies. No information needed to compile the rankings was collected directly from the HEIs.

 

It was then decided to reduce the diversification of HEIs included in the rankings in order to avoid comparing unmatchable institutions and to increase the relevance of the rankings. 

 

The ENTRY CRITERIA include a qualitative condition:

• • Institutions included in the EngiRank have been checked against the European Engineering Education Database (EEED) maintained by ENGINEERS EUROPE, a federation of professional engineering associations from 33 EHEA countries;

and quantitative conditions:

• • The HEIs with a significant share of research output in engineering and technology[2] at least 30% of publications in the last 5 years (2019-2023) indexed in the Scopus database - were considered. However, institutions with a majority of publications in medical and health sciences or social sciences between 2019 and 2023 were not considered as HEIs with a strong engineering profile and are not listed in the EngiRank;
  • The thresholds for the number of publications in the main engineering disciplines over the last 5 full years that are indexed in the Scopus database are as follows:
    • chemical engineering – 200,
    • civil engineering – 100,
    • electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering – 200,
    • environmental engineering – 100,
    • materials engineering – 250,
    • mechanical engineering – 200,
    • medical engineering – 100.

 

The subject ranking in each of the above disciplines includes HEIs that meet the qualitative condition and both quantitative conditions: a share of publications in engineering and technology of at least 30% and a number of publications in a given discipline of at least a threshold value[3]. The institutional ranking within EngiRank includes HEIs that are classified in at least three subject rankings.

 

In designing the EngiRank, we paid particular attention to the degree of commitment of institutions to their economic and social missions. In order to reflect the transfer and application of academic knowledge by universities, we have included in the rankings indicators that measure the collaboration between academia and industry researchers, the use of research outputs in successful patent applications, the universities' own patent activity and - where appropriate - the contribution to sustainable development goals.

 

EngiRank is a composite of different categories of indicators. We believe that the scale of an institution’s activities matters: research and innovation exhibits increasing returns to scale, and the larger the scale of an HEI's activities, the more opportunities there are for students and academic staff. Therefore, size indicators measuring the volume of research output, the amount of research and innovation funding, the number of patents or the number of publications related to the selected sustainable development goals play an important role in the rankings. The inclusion of the subject rankings scores into the institutional ranking reflects returns to scope and the benefits of interdisciplinarity. Then there are the conventional efficiency indicators expressed in relative terms, such as citations per publication, share of publications in the top 10% journals, number of patent citations received on average by a publication, percentage of publications that are co-authored by industry researchers or foreign researchers. The introduction of a dynamic indicator, the change in citation impact, is something of a novelty in the universe of university rankings. Finally, we have included qualitative indicators representing engineering degree programmes accreditations and membership in a European university alliance.

The EngiRankrankingsin the following disciplines:

• • chemical engineering,
  • electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering,
  • materials engineering,
  • mechanical engineering,

 

are based on three criteria: Research (64%), Innovation (26%) and Teaching Quality (10%).

 

We then looked at the potential and expected contribution of university activities in the remaining disciplines to the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

• • civil engineering – SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities,
  • environmental engineering – SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation,
  • medical engineering – SDG 3: Good health and well-being.

 

Thus, for each of the above-mentioned disciplines, the additional criterion: Contribution to SDGs (5%) was added for each of the above disciplines, while at the same time the weights of the other criteria were reduced: Research - to 60% and Innovation - to 25%.

 

Each indicator in the subject rankings refers strictly to a given discipline. Some indicators in the institutional ranking and in the subject rankings are based on the same metrics, differing only in the scope of publications or grants taken into account. Although such indicators from the subject rankings are indirectly included in the institutional ranking (via the Engineering and Technology Capability criterion), this should not be considered as a duplication of indicators. It should be noted that some HEIs are not classified in all subject rankings (in particular, about half of the HEIs listed in the institutional ranking are classified in the medical engineering ranking). Moreover, even for HEIs classified in all subject rankings, there are publications and grants not covered by the subject ranking indicators, such as those in general engineering; nuclear energy and engineering; control and systems engineering; safety, risk, reliability and quality; media technology; bioengineering; other miscellaneous engineering. They are only included in the institutional ranking.

 

RESEARCH (60%/64%)

 

The criterion is made up of four indicators calculated on the basis of the Scopus bibliographic database.

 

• • Publications: number of publications from the years 2019-2023 in the relevant discipline in the Scopus database which are affiliated to the institution. Source: Scopus/SciVal (15%/16%)
  • Publications in Top 10% Journals:percentage of the institution's publications published in the top 10% journals according to CiteScore in the relevant discipline in the years 2019-2023. Source: Scopus/SciVal (15%/16%)
  • Citations: ratio of the number of citations received by the institution's publications from the years 2019-2023 in the relevant discipline indexed in the Scopus database to the number of these publications. Source: Scopus/SciVal (15%/16%)
  • Change of Impact: dynamic indicator calculated as the ratio of the field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) of the institution's publications in the years 2019-2023 to the FWCI of the publications in the years 2014-2018 in the relevant discipline. Source: Scopus/SciVal (15%/16%)

 

INNOVATION (25%/26%)

 

The criterion consisted of two indicators. The Scopus bibliographic database was the source for the calculation of the Academic-Corporate Collaboration indicator. The values for the Research and Innovation Funding are based on information from the CORDIS database.

 

• • Academic-Corporate Collaboration: percentage of publications in the relevant discipline published between 2019 and 2023 that are co-authored by researchers affiliated to an institution outside academia. Source: Scopus/SciVal (15%/16%)
  • Research and Innovation Funding: value of grants awarded to the university under the EU framework programmes for research and innovation to finance research projects in the relevant discipline between 2019 and 2023. Source: CORDIS database (10%)

 

TEACHING QUALITY (10%)

 

The single indicator criterion. The indicator is measured by the number of the degree programmes accredited by ENAEE authorised agencies or by ABET (more information on ENAEE and ABET in the frame below)

 

• • Accreditations: number of engineering degree programmes related to the relevant discipline accredited by the agency authorized by the European Network for Accreditation of Engineering Education (ENAEE) or by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) valid in 2024[1]. Source: databases of EUR-ACE labelled programmes (ENAEE authorised) and ABET accredited programmes (10%)

 

 

CONTRIBUTION TO SDGs (0%/5%)

 

The single indicator criterion. The indicator measures the institution’s contribution to selected SDGs in defined disciplines through the number of publications.

 

• SDG 3: Good health and well-being (medical engineering only): number of publications from 2019-2023 simultaneously assigned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good health and well-being and to medical engineering (FORD category 2.6). Source: Scopus/Scival
• SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation(environmental engineering only): number of publications from 2019-2023 simultaneously assigned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation and to environmental engineering (FORD category 2.7). Source: Scopus/Scival
• SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities(civil engineering only): number of publications from 2019-2023 simultaneously assigned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities and to civil engineering (FORD category 2.1). Source: Scopus/Scival

The table below summarises the weighting of the indicators in specific subject rankings.

 

 

 

The EngiRank includes 225 HEIs from all countries of the European Union countries as well as Norway and Switzerland:

 

Austria - 4	Latvia - 3
Belgium - 4	Lithuania - 2
Bulgaria - 3	Luxembourg - 1
Croatia - 3	Malta - 1
Cyprus - 2	Netherlands - 4
Czechia - 10	Norway - 2
Denmark - 2	Poland - 21
Estonia - 1	Portugal - 9
Finland - 2	Romania - 10
France - 58	Slovakia - 3
Germany - 31	Slovenia - 1
Greece - 7	Spain – 9
Hungary - 5	Sweden - 7
Ireland - 1	Switzerland - 2
Italy - 17

 

The subject rankings list the following number of HEIs:

• • chemical engineering - 169,
  • civil engineering - 143,
  • electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering - 178,
  • environmental engineering - 160,
  • materials engineering - 196,
  • mechanical engineering - 177,
  • medical engineering - 97.

 

The institutional ranking includes 183 HEIs.

 

The EngiRank rankings are modelled on the basis on the Multi-Attribute Value Theory. According to this theory, firstly, it was assumed that it is possible to estimate the value or the total score of each HEI (as well as the disciplines under consideration) by taking into account the impact of the individual criteria as measured by the corresponding indicators. Secondly, it was assumed that if the criteria are not equally important, it is possible to make them comparable by weighting the corresponding indicators with appropriate coefficients. Thirdly, the additivity of the weighted criteria was assumed, which means that the final score is the linear combination of the partial scores. Finally, the indicators with an asymmetric distribution are generally transformed (square root or cube root) to reduce the skewness of the distribution.

 

The sub-scores for each indicator are calculated in relation to the leading institution. The score of 100 is assigned to the HEI with the highest indicator value, and the scores for the other institutions are calculated as a proportional distance to the leader. The partnership in a European university alliance is a specific binary indicator - a score of 100 is assigned to each of 118 universities listed in the institutional ranking that is a member of any European university alliance.

 

The sub-scores for all the indicators obtained by the HEI – both in the subject rankings and in the institutional ranking – are summed using appropriate weights. The HEIs are then ranked in descending order according to the weighted sum of the scores. The leading institution is given the final score of 100 and the following institutions are given scores equal to the ratio of their weighted sum of sub-scores to that of the leading institution (as a percentage). The position of HEIs in a ranking is determined by a discrimination threshold of 1 %pt. of the final score. This means that institutions with final scores that differ by less than 1 %pt. occupy the same position in the ranking.