The ̽����Ƶ BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2014, powered by Thomson Reuters, will be published online at 21.00 GMT on Wednesday 4 December, 2013, and in a special printed supplement with ̽����Ƶ on Thursday 5 December.

“Many of the world’s emerging economies have put the development of world-class universities at the very heart of their national strategies,” said Phil Baty, editor of the ̽����Ƶ World University Rankings. “This new ranking - a world first - will provide an unprecedented and penetrating insight into their progress against our established, trusted and independent global standards.”

The new BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings will examine leading research-intensive universities in 22 countries defined as “emerging economies”, based on the September 2013 update of the FTSE Global Equity Index Series Country Classification. It will include universities from the large “BRICS” economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, as well as from Czech Republic, Hungary, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines and UAE.

“With global rankings so heavily dominated by the rich world, there is a growing demand for the research to reflect more on local or economic contexts, and an increasing appetite from an ever-growing range of countries and institutions to benchmark themselves against the world’s very best, using the clear global data definitions developed with our rankings data partner, Thomson Reuters, and based on the tough but trusted global standards set by the ̽����Ƶ’s World University Rankings,” said Baty.

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The overall World University Rankings, published each October, are heavily dominated by the US (which takes 77 of the world’s top 200 universities), and the developed world. Only five institutions from the 22 emerging economies appear in the top 200 of the overall rankings, so the new rankings will provide valuable, rich data on a much wider group of institutions from a wider range of countries.

The rankings will use the same thirteen performance indicators used to create the annual World University Rankings, which examine all the core missions of the modern global university - research, teaching, knowledge transfer and international activity.

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The new BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings will be fully independent - they have not been funded or commissioned by any agency or organisation associated with any of the countries being assessed. But the rankings have been developed after extensive dialogue with government representatives across emerging economies.

In July 2012 ̽����Ƶ’s rankings editor Phil Baty was invited to discuss the THE’s research at Brazil’s Ministry of Education by the National Institute for Educational Studies (Inep). This was followed in April 2013 with a round table discussion with officials in Moscow, organised by Russia’s National Training Foundation, and in May 2013 with a National Policy Dialogue on University Rankings in New Delhi, India, organised by the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India.

All of the emerging economies rankings data are independently collected, analysed and verified by Thomson Reuters, which employs approximately 60,000 people and operates in over 100 countries.

“This will be the world’s first global university ranking to put universities into a clearer local and economic context using a formula trusted the world over by governments, university leaders, academic faculty as well as students and their parents,” said Baty.

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