Interest in the ranking of Arab and/or Middle Eastern and North African universities seems to be growing. There is definitely a feeling in many countries that higher education needs drastic reform and should open up to objective evaluation. Of course, there is also a realisation that rankings can be helpful for marketing and career advancement.
But there are problems. Most Arab universities do not have sufficient staff and organisation to provide adequate data about faculty and student numbers, let alone about things like employment of graduates or sources of income. Surveys are a possible source of information. for teaching quality but it is unlikely that at present they could produce reliable and accurate information.
The collection of data about research has probably reached the point where reasonable research rankings can be created for the Arab world and also for regions like South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. Unfortunately, the majority of Arab or Middle Eastern universities produce very little significant research so such research based rankings would probably be of relevance to about fifty institutions.
See
Higher Education Strategy Associates for more discussion.
The
US News has produced
a variation on its new Best Global Universities rankings. This is based on research and citations data from the Scopus database. As a ranking of universities according to research output and impact, it looks quite plausible.
The top five universities are:
1. King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
2. King Abdulaziz University,Saudi Arabia
3. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
4. Cairo University, Egypt
5. American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
QS
has produced rankings that are "a pilot version of the ranking that has been developed to reflect priorities and challenges for universities in the region."
The top five are:
1. King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia
2. American University of Beirut, Lebanon
3. King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
4. American University of Cairo, Egypt
5. King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.
This is a bit different from the
US News rankings but the QS table does include indicators like faculty student ration, web impact and international faculty and students.
Times Higher Education has produced what it calls
a "snapshot", which is in fact only one indicator, citations per paper normalised by field and year. The top five are:
1. Texas A&M University Qatar
2. Lebanese American University
3. King Abdulaziz University,Saudi Arabia
4. Qatar University
5. American University in Beirut.
Texas A&M Qatar is a single subject branch campus which does not have a doctoral programme. It is difficult to believe that it will actually be in the full rankings that are scheduled for next year. THE's top thirty does not include Cairo University or King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.
As a simple check on the validity of these three rankings I have calculated their correlation with the results from a search of Google Scholar on the 4th of April. I have also included the scores for "publications" provided by THE next to their "snapshot" indicator.
There is a very strong correlation between the Google Scholar and the THE publication scores, a somewhat smaller correlation with the
US News scores, which combine publication and citation data and a moderate correlation with the QS scores, which include web impact, internationalisation and institutional data.
There is no significant correlation with the THE citation indicator. In fact, this "snapshot" correlates with nothing, not even THE's own publication data.
Correlations
| Google Scholar | USN | QS | THE "snapshot" | THE publications |
| Google Scholar |
| .757** .000
87 | .570** .000
49 | .075
.692
30 | .852**
.000
30 |
| USN | .757**
.000
87 |
| .419*
.017
32 | .266
.170
28 | .869**
.000
28 |
| QS | 570**
.000
49 | .419*
.017
32 |
| .267
.337
15 | .412
.128
15 |
| THE snapshot | .075
.692
30 | .266
.170
28 | .267
.337
15 |
| .109
.567
30 |
| THE publications | .852**
.000
30 | .869**
.000
28 | .412
.128
15 | .109
.567
30 |
|
