EHESO platform, EngiRank and more discussed at CESAER Task Force Benchmark Meeting

The International Collaboration Department (ICD) staff at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute attended the meeting of the Task Force Benchmark within the CESAER association (Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research) that took place fully online on 5 February 2025.

The meeting agenda covered several key points:

Peter Elspass, Head of University Development and Controlling at Leibniz University Hannover, provided an update on the European Higher Education Sector Observatory (EHESO) platform. His presentation built on insights from the Launch conference of the European Higher Education Sector Scoreboard, held in Brussels on 30 January 2024. The initiative aims to reduce the data collection burden while ensuring comprehensive, reliable insights through a survey. However, some institutions remain hesitant to invest time and efforts in this “big” survey.

Touko Närhi, Advisor for Benchmark & Higher Education, provided brief update on the 4th Generation Universities (4GU) project, in collaboration with Elsevier. He noted that the 4GU launch event was held on 6 February and a public website would be launched soon where 4GU universities’ logos will be presented. It is worth noting too that certification is free, but there will be charges for more detailed benchmarking through the 4GU platform.

Kate Jack from University of Strathclyde gave a presentation on internal dashboards on league table rankings within her university. This was followed by a discussion on similar dashboards within member universities. In particular, the UK League Table Focus includes the National Students Survey, collated each year across UK, final year students being target audience.

Johan Blaus from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Morris Villarroel from Universidad Politecnica de Madrid updated on work done with LinkedIn Talent Insights (LTI) by various partners related to institutional rankings in the past months, with the intention of starting a discussion group to test the usefulness of this add-on. LinkedIn Talent Insights is an add-on to the LinkedIn social media platform that provides users with relevant insights from the largest professional network in the world, with one billion members and 16 million job posts, among other data sources. The information is in real time, including insights into alumni positions within companies, and partnerships with other universities and companies. Giving his presentation, Johan Blaus noted that KTH is exploring the benefit and possibilities of data from LTI to strengthen analytical work and complement various forms of surveys.

Birte Hornemann from Aalborg University in Denmark briefly presented the EngiRank methodology and the results obtained by CESAER members. According to her, of 59 CESAER member universities, 44 were ranked by EngiRank. CESAER has 16 universities in top 20, Delft University of Technology taking second place. Developed in partnership with Elsevier, EngiRank serves as a tool to compare the quality of engineering and technology programs offered by universities across all 27 EU countries, as well as Norway and Switzerland.

Touko Närhi also gave an update on the next steps in designing the 2026-2027 Work Plan and the co-design process. Contributions and input from all representatives of CESAER member universities will be invited from early April until 23 May. In addition, he gave a short introduction on the shift to Teams, where the Task Force documents can be accessed and shared.

In the final part of the meeting, upcoming events were confirmed, including an online task force meeting scheduled for 3 June 2025, and the sixth in-person meeting of Task Force Benchmark 2024-2025 in Bucharest in 11-12 September 2025, hosted by the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest.