Last year, U.S. News announced that it had created a directory of more than 800 universities across the Arab region. The directory was our first step to study the schools across the region, using publicly available data. Since then, U.S. News has traveled to the region to discuss the ongoing project; we are now pleased to announce that the inaugural 2015 U.S. News Best Arab Region Universities rankings will go live on usnews.com on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
This 1.0 version of the rankings, which will show the universities that are the best in the Arab region overall as well as in key academic subject areas, is the beginning of a long-term project to develop surveys and rankings for the region.
Other global rankings have typically included few higher educational institutions from the Arab region. U.S. News believes that this first Best Arab Region Universities rankings will be the most comprehensive assessment of this type published to date, allowing prospective students and their parents, as well as policymakers and employers in the region, to accurately compare institutions. Such comparisons are not currently possible using standardized educational data.
The 2015 rankings — which are based on data and research metrics provided by Scopus, part of the Elsevier Research Intelligence portfolio — will focus specifically on institutions’ academic research overall and not their separate undergraduate or graduate programs. Arab region universities will be able to benchmark themselves against schools in their own country and region and discover top schools from other countries to collaborate with.
The overall Best Arab Region Universities rankings will be of the top 91 universities in the region, which will include schools located in 16 countries. The methodology and weights developed by U.S. News to calculate the rankings will focus on factors that measure research performance, using a variety of bibliometric indicators such as publications and citations.
In subsequent editions of the rankings, U.S. News plans to include other ranking factors, including separate reputation surveys of Arab region academics and employers and statistical, school-level data collected directly from Arab region universities.
For the 2015 edition, beyond the overall rankings, U.S. News will also publish rankings in 16 subject areas, including key fields such as computer science, engineering, medicine, mathematics and social sciences. These subject-specific rankings — which are not of academic majors, departments or a specific school at a university like a medical school — will be based on academic research performance in those subjects using various bibliometric measures, including publications and citations.
On the U.S. News site, each ranked Arab region university in the overall and subject rankings will have a profile page displaying contact information and detailed ranking indicators. U.S. News will also publish comprehensive methodologies and FAQs that will explain the data, ranking factors, weights and calculations.
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New Rankings of Best Arab Region Universities Coming Nov. 4 originally appeared on usnews.com
