Visegrad Group countries compared through world university rankings

Abstract

The Visegrad Group is an alliance of four Central European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, founded by the Visegrad Declaration in 1991. The historical, political, and cultural similarities, highlighted by their shared experiences with economic transformation, make the Visegrad Group countries well suited for comparison. The article analyses and compares the performance of Visegrad Four (V4) countries in the recent editions of the most established individual university rankings as well as in the recent rankings of national higher education systems. Czech Republic ranks highest, followed by Poland and Hungary at approximately the same level, while Slovakia falls behind other V4 countries. Relevant socioeconomic factors influencing the country’s performance in university rankings are considered and discussed. The results confirm the leading position of the Czech Republic in the region, and they are in line with the recently conducted studies comparing the economic attributes, R&D expenditures and quality of life in the V4 countries. The results thus also prove and confirm the strong interconnection between the economic performance, R&D expenditures and the performance of the higher education sector.