UNAIR NEWS – A university ranking organization Quacquarelli Symonds World Class University (QS WUR) has released its 2018 ranking list. In the list, Universitas Airlangga has improved its position a level to 702th from last year.

UNAIR Rector Prof. Dr. Mochammad Nasih stated from the last ranking, UNAIR has made an improvement for its academic reputation and employer reputation. According to Nasih, there are two factors which improve the academic reputation, the numbers of lecturers and researches acknowledged internationally.

“It is improving from 13.5 to 15 on academic reputation and our employer reputation is also okay. While, for the other fields are still improving slowly. There are more researches acknowledged at international level. The academic climate is also managed well. We’ll just need to wait for the improved results,” said Nasih.

UNAIR Rector said that countermeasures have been prepared to improve the academic climate. Academicians are targeted to get 700 articles in the proceedings and 400 articles in reputable international journals.

Efforts have been made to execute the plan successfully such as establishing special team handling publications and financial aid.

“We are establishing conferences which produce indexed proceedings. Last year, we had only 242 for research publications, this year we target for 400 publications. Hopefully, God’s willing, there will be significant improvement. We are still developing the foundation,” Nasih stated.

Regarding the internationalization program, UNAIR has established a new unit called Airlangga Global Engagement (AGE). It will intensively handle various academic partnership program UNAIR has with external institutions.

Nasih admitted, through AGE, UNAIR will keep pushing double degree program, international accreditation and certification.

“There are three programs getting ready for AUN (ASEAN University Networking) accreditation. They will be assessed next year, but they have reached the summit level. There are Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Pharmacy. All of them are in life science,” said the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) professor.

Regarding the target to reach Top 500 in 2019, UNAIR Rector is quite optimistic. “As long as everyone supports our targets, we will achieve it. Our researches and publications will also improve,” said Nasih.

Author : Defrina Sukma S

Editor   : Nuri Hermawan