Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are home to the best universities in the Middle East, with the UAE lagging behind at the 25th position, according to the Center for World University Rankings. Globally, American universities dominate the ranking with Harvard named “The Best University in the World”.
American universities, and all of the Ivy League members of course, are among the world’s best higher education institutions, according to the list of the top 1,000 universities in the world. Released last Tuesday by the Center for World University Rankings in Saudi Arabia, the list ranks universities on the basis of eight different indicators – quality of faculty, quality of education, publications, alumni employment, influence, patents, citations and broad impact. Instead of evaluating the international prestige of the school and the quality of the faculty members’ research, this analysis claims to be measuring the actual quality of education and the training of the students. This happens by estimating the number of a university’s alumni who have won major awards, prizes and medals, relative to the university’s size. According to these, the top 10 universities in the world for 2014 are:
- Harvard University, USA
- Stanford University, USA
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
- University of Cambridge, UK
- University of Oxford, UK
- Columbia University, USA
- University of California, Berkley, USA
- University of Chicago, USA
- Princeton University, USA
- Yale University, USA
The prestigious top 25 are predominantly American, but at University of Tokyo and Kyoto University come at 13th and 16th positions, respectively. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich is 18th on the list; Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is also No.1 for the Middle East, is No. 22, while South Korea’s Seoul National University has made it to No.24.
Israeli universities are the top 5 in the Middle East, followed by the Turkish Istanbul University (global ranking No. 396 and Saudi Arabia’s King Saud University (No.420 globally). For the Arab world, King Saud University is followed by the American University of Beirut (No. 561 globally), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia (No. 668 globally), Cairo University (No. 802 globally) and United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain (No. 924 globally).
Besides the U.S., China, Japan and the UK have the largest number of universities included in the ranking. Although the Center for World University Rankings launched the list in 2012, it seems this is the first ranking for international high education institutions that makes the evaluations based on so many factors.
