Sumy State University

Introduction

Sumy State University is a full comprehensive Ukrainian state university with more than 50% of private funding sources, high international orientation and focus on research. The University currently serves more about 3 000 graduate and postgraduate students who are pursuing master and PhD degrees in 60 majors according to 40 directions in 23 fields of knowledge both full-time and part-time. The University holds high positions among Ukrainian higher education institutions for the number of prize-winning places in All-Ukrainian competitions of students’ research works and All-Ukrainian Olympiads in educational disciplines, training areas and majors. About 1250 foreign students represent more than 50 countries worldwide. Prolific research groups at SSU are engaged in international grant programmes and projects of EU (Tempus, Erasmus Mundus, Youth in Action), United Nations Development Programme, World Bank programmes, grant projects of private foundations, bilateral research projects, etc. For the last 5 years the amount of research work in frames of international grant projects has increased in about 20 times. Currently SSU implements more than 30 international grant projects. Sumy State University’s academic staff includes Corresponding Members of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, 85 Doctors of Sciences (D. Habil.), Professors and 500 Candidates of Sciences (Ph.D.), Associate Professors. Sumy State University is in the TOP-group (5 %) of leading universities of the world, according to the international ranking of higher education institutions QS World University Rankings. SSU is in the TOP-100 according to the QS University Rankings: EECA (with the overall score 61-70) among the universities of this region. SSU occupies the 4th position among Ukrainian universities. According to the worldwide Internet rankings Webometrics and 4ICU, SSU takes the 5th and 4th places respectively among Ukrainian universities. It also takes the a high position among the European ranking U-Multirank that identifies most indicators of academic, extracurricular, international and other activity of SSU as being higher than the world average value. Sumy State University is the first Ukrainian higher education institution, which has passed in 2014 an independent external audit of the QS Company and was given the highest points (5 stars) in such categories as Teaching, Engagement, Access, and E-learning. According to the results of Round University Ranking, completed by one of the largest information and analytical companies in the world Thomson Reuters, Sumy State University entered the TOP-5 best universities in Ukraine and the TOP-700 best universities in the world. In accordance with University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), evaluating the quality of academic performance of world’s universities, Sumy State University holds the 4th position among Ukrainian universities and is included to the TOP-10% universities worldwide. According to international ecological ranking UI GreenMetric 2015 Sumy State University enters the Top-250 universities in the world and occupies the second place among Ukrainian universities. SSU is the 1st Ukrainian university to enter this ecological ranking. According to the nationwide ranking of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, SSU takes the 3rd place among “classical universities” of Ukraine. According to the number of administrative agreements and grants, and the efficient use of budget funds Sumy State University has a leading position among classical universities and is in the TOP-10 universities of Ukraine. Sumy State University belongs to the 7% of the best universities in the world according to the results of quality evaluation of the world universities’ scientific activity based on the citation of scientists on Google Scholar by Webometrics. SSU holds high positions in the ranking of Ukrainian universities “Osvita.ua” (educational leader in the northern region, the 8th position among all national universities and the 5th position among the classical universities of Ukraine). SSU also enters the TOP-3 Ukrainian universities according to the international activity indicators and is the 1st in dynamics of growth according to “Top-200 Ukraine”. According to the SCOPUS database, Sumy State University holds a leading position among Ukrainian universities for h-index (the index of research impact) and the number of citations by international scholarly community. Corresponding Members of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, 120 Doctors of Sciences, Professors and 650 Candidates of Sciences (PhD), Associate Professors represent academic staff of the University. There are 45 postgraduate and post-doctoral programmes, degree awarding academic councils.