In a new evaluation of 1,000 universities worldwide published in Jeddah last week, Arab schools performed poorly.
None were among the top 500 and most Arab countries did not make it to the list at all, including those previously known for quality education, such as Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Only 10 universities from four Arab countries made it to the list, albeit in very low positions. Puzzling, considering their long history of higher education and the attention many Arab governments and families place on higher education.
Unlike other rankings focused on faculty and research criteria only, the new evaluation, published by the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) in Jeddah on July 17, 2015, tried to be more comprehensive by including education and training quality. It utilized eight criteria, with varying weights, to evaluate 1,000 universities. Top three criteria (with a weight of 25 percent each) were quality of education, measured by the relative number of university alumni winning major international awards, prizes; alumni employment, measured by the relative number of a university’s alumni holding CEO positions at top international companies; and quality of faculty, measured by the number of academics winning major international awards, prizes, and medals. The remaining criteria (worth 25 percent) included faculty publications in reputable and highly-influential journals, highly-cited research papers, and international patent filings. As expected, American universities dominated the list.
Of 1,000 universities ranked in this survey, 229 were American. They also occupied eight of the top 10 positions: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Columbia, Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, Cornell.
Then came China with 83 universities, Japan (74), UK (65), Germany (55), France (49), Italy (47), Spain (40), South Korea (36), Canada (33), Australia (27), Taiwan (21), Brazil (18), India (16), Netherlands (13), Austria (12), Sweden (11), and 10 schools from Finland, Poland and Switzerland each. The rest of the list (124) was shared among the rest of the world.
The geographic distribution of best schools reflected the shifting economic scene toward eastern Asia: Notice the 83 schools in China, 21 in Taiwan, and 36 in South Korea ranking high on the list, while only five Russian schools made it, fewer than Hong Kong, New Zealand or Poland, its former satellite.
Arab universities, in particular, fared rather poorly, a performance inconsistent with the number of those universities, their students and faculty, or with their lustrous history going back a thousand years or more for some.
Only 10 Arab universities made it this year to the 1,000 list of best schools: Four from Saudi Arabia, four from Egypt, one from the United Arab Emirates and one from Lebanon, as follows, in order: King Saud University, coming in the 569th place; American University of Beirut (682); King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (704); Cairo University (796); King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (847); UAE University (950); Ain Shams University (956); Al-Mansourah University (988); King Abdulaziz University (995); Alexandria University (997).
The low rankings are especially puzzling in the case of Saudi universities, where government spending on higher education is among the highest globally. Saudi schools managed to secure only four places among the top 1,000 schools evaluated, ranking quite low and getting lower every year: King Saud University occupied 569th place in 2015 rankings, compared to 420th last year; King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) came in 704th, down from 668th in 2014; King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals, which did very well in its early years, came in 847th place in 2015, down from 807th in 2014; and King Abdulaziz University came in 995th in 2015, down from 992 in 2014.
Some dismiss the survey as foreign or say that its criteria are inconsistent with the special conditions under which Arab and Saudi universities have had to operate. But CWUR, which authored the report issued last week, is in fact a local entity run by a professor at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, and as such should be familiar with those conditions. Adding to its credibility is the fact that its host university fared rather poorly in the report, coming in 995th place, barely making it.
It is of course easy to explain how higher education suffered in countries struggling financially or going through difficult transitions or internal conflicts, but it is more difficult to explain in the case of rich and stable countries.
