DOHA: Qatar University (QU) has been placed among the top 500 universities in the world, according to a recent ranking.
The achievement was announced yesterday by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) whereby QU was placed in the range of 481-490 most highly ranked universities for the 2015/16 edition.
QU President Dr Hassan Al Derham said, “Being selected among the 500 highest ranked universities in the world is an important milestone for QU at a time when the institution is positioned as the fastest-growing university in research in the region. This comes as a result of our committed reflection on our academic and research strategy, and dedication towards quality output and improved results. Continuing academic and research achievements by faculty and students, new and targeted graduate programmes, and the establishment of the medical college will all serve, among other things, to further advance our standing in the international arena.”
QU Vice President and Chief Academic Officer and Chair of QU Ranking Committee Dr Mazen Hasna said: “The achievement highlights QU’s position as a driver of higher education and research quality in the region. It also reflects the university’s expansion in the areas of internationalisation and research. It is worth noting that QU’s improvement in the rankings is all the more commendable this year as the list of assessed universities increased since last year, nevertheless QU’s rank continued to improve.”
The 12th edition of QS’s annual ranking of the world’s top universities uses six performance indicators — academic reputation (40 percent), employer reputation (10 percent), student-to-faculty ratio (20 percent), citations per faculty (20 percent), international faculty ratio (5 percent), and international student ratio (5 percent) — to assess the institutions’ global reputation, research impact, staffing levels and international complexion.
This year’s release sees refinements introduced to the ranking methodology aiming to improve the way in which research citations are assessed. A normalised total citation count has been introduced to the research citations indicator to reflect differing citation rate norms in different faculty areas.
The overall results were accompanied by the QS World University Rankings by Faculty, which highlight the world’s top universities in five individual faculty areas: arts and humanities, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine, natural sciences, and social sciences and management.
The Peninsula
