Two Israeli universities rated among world’s top 100 for research

Tel Aviv University and Technion come in at 22nd and 76th respectively.

By LIDAR GRAVÉ-LAZI
Students at Hebrew University (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Students at Hebrew University
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Two Israeli universities have been ranked among the world’s top 100 for research, according to the annual QS World University Rankings released Monday.
First compiled in 2004, the QS World University Rankings rates the world’s best-performing higher education institutions, assessing some 3,000 and ranking more than 800.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was the highest ranking academic institution in Israel and ranked 148th globally, maintaining its standing from the previous year.
The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology was ranked third in Israel and 213th worldwide, dropping 15 places overall and out of the top 200 universities bracket from the previous year, when it ranked 198th. However, the university placed 76th globally for research.
Tel Aviv University improved its standing within Israel, surpassing the Technion to grab the second-ranking slot among the country’s leading universities. Globally, the university ranked 212th, a nine point decrease from the previous year.
But TAU ranked 22nd in the world for research, with a citations per faculty score of 97 out of 100.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev also slid down the rankings to place 320th, down from 259 in 2015.
Bar-Ilan University maintained its standing in the 601-650 bracket and the University of Haifa improved its ranking to the 651-700 bracket.
“We’re delighted that the Hebrew University continues to receive international recognition as a world academic leader,” Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, the university’s president, said of the results.
“The university’s academic and research reputation is a direct result of the hard work and commitment to excellence displayed by our faculty members, administrative staff, and students.
Our investment in recent years in attracting the best researchers and equipping them with the tools to succeed is paying dividends,” he said.
This year’s results also suggested that Israel’s top-ranked universities have seen drops in their status among international students, as all of the universities have decreased ranking for their international student ratio, a measure of the proportion of international students at a university.
“This year’s rankings imply that levels of investment are determining who progresses and who regresses,” said Ben Sowter, head of research at QS’s Intelligence Unit.
“Institutions in countries that provide high levels of targeted funding, whether from endowments or from the public purse, are rising. On the other hand, Western European nations making or proposing cuts to public research spending are losing ground to their US and Asian counterparts,” he said.
US institutions – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Standford University, and Harvard University – held all top-three places, respectively, for the first time since the inaugural rankings of 2004.


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