Széchenyi István University pledges to significant sustainability goals, which imbues all aspects of its education, research and development activities, as well as embodying its cooperation with partners. The university’s efforts are shown through its sustainability achievements confirmed by both international certification organisations’ – the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and the Times Higher Education (THE) – in their respective sustainability world rankings.
The biggest challenge of our times is sustainability, which significantly establishes the viability of our planet through the reduction of human society’s impact and effect on future liveable status. It was not an accident that the Széchenyi István University set up sustainability to be one of its achievable strategic goals as the institution naturally puts great emphasis of sustainable practices such as the exceptional state-of-art technologies, including electromobility, precision agriculture, or digitalisation, and both the its training / educational & research programs spectrum. The harmonic symbioses of the institution with nature is also illustrated by countless actions, such as the conscious effort to reduce energy consumption through the energy saving renovations of various institutional buildings.
It’s important to note that the importance of sustainability has been also recognised by the most renewed international certification organisations, in terms of higher education global rankings. These organisations too have acknowledged the achievements of Széchenyi István University. The rankings based on the contribution of sustainability improvement goals made by the UN, know by the name „THE Impact Rankings”, found theGyőr based university to be now one of the worlds best 400 universities in the categories of ˝sustainable cities and communities˝, ˝fair work and economic development˝, as well as ˝peace, honesty and powerful institutions˝.
The latest news is that on the sustainability world rankings of QS, published on 5th December, Széchenyi University has been ranked as the sixth best in Hungary. This ranking assesses the contribution to sustainability of the institutions, based on the environmental and social effect of the standard system used by the organisation, along with focusing on the quality of management. Széchenyi University excelled exceptionally in the last category – in which it ranked 273rd in the field of environmental sustainability and equality as well.
(Photo: MTI /Csaba Krizsán)
˝Our university aims to contribute with its actions to the development of state-of-the-art technologies, in line with the growth and sustainability of the region. These three segments not only are connected with each other, but they also strengthen each other. Hence it’s incredibly important confirmation that two sustainability world ranking organisations recognise our institution’s achievements in this field.
For our Hungarian and international students it is a progressively pivotal aspect, to study at a university which does something for a sustainable… a livable future” – emphasised dr. Bálint Filep, the director of the university.
˝As a result of the efforts of the last few years and the achievements accomplished by our university, our international presence is getting stronger. Currently Széchenyi István University has already been placed on six significant higher education world rankings, four of which were listed for the first time this year. Besides the two sustainability rankings, we appeared on world rankings which give the greatest weight to our qualification and reflect the quality of our education.
The world and European rankings of the QS system are similar to „THE”. Based on QS measurements, we are in the top ten percent in Europe, while based on the world rankings of THE, we are in the top five percent of universities in the world. In addition our institution is one of the best in the engineering field.̋ – expressed dr. Eszter Lukács, Vice President for International and Strategic Relations of the University.