BEIRUT: The American University of Beirut ranked first in the Arab region for social sciences, second in medicine programs, and came in fifth overall, in a ranking that featured 91 higher education institutions from 16 countries.
The evaluation was made by US News & World Report, a U.S.-based media company known for its influential university rankings, in its inaugural ranking of Best Arab Region Universities, AUB said in a statement Wednesday.
The rankings put AUB first among Lebanon’s universities.
“AUB fared extremely well in the US News & World Report rankings, given that we were evaluated against universities five to 10 times our size, and against graduate universities that exist solely to conduct and publish research,” President Peter Dorman said.
The US News & World Report’s Best Arab Region Universities’ rankings are determined solely on the cumulative volume of research in the past five years, during which publications in fields including science, technology, medicine, social science and the arts and humanities are examined.
The rankings focus specifically on institutions’ academic research output and performance, not on individual graduate or undergraduate academic programs, the statement said.
Of the region’s 800 universities, only 91 were included in the 2014 ranking. To be eligible for the ranking, Arab region universities had to have an average of 80 papers per year between 2009 and 2013.
AUB’s immunology and microbiology programs were ranked fourth in the region, biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology were ranked sixth, environmental science was ranked eighth, and energy programs ranked 10th, the statement added.
“University rankings are critical as a means for communicating the nature and quality of education and research, both to prospective students and faculty, and to scholars and institutions worldwide that seek to collaborate with AUB,” Dorman said.
Saudi Arabia’s King Saud University, King Abdulaziz University and King Abdullah University of Science & Technology claimed the top three spots in the overall rankings respectively, followed in fourth place by Egypt’s Cairo University.
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