University of Jordan ranked 9th best in Arab region

AMMAN — The University of Jordan (UJ) was ranked 9th best university in the QS Arab Region University Ranking for 2018, maintaining its position among the top 10 universities in the region. 

The ranking, published on the QS World University Ranking website on Tuesday, features 160 of the region’s most prestigious universities assessing each institution’s reputation among employers and academics, including web and research impact. 

“The UJ achieved the fifth place in reputation among employers, showing how its graduates are highly regarded,” said the ranking report, highlighting that the university “maintains a large number of international partnerships and agreements, mostly for student exchange programmes with institutions such as Vanderbilt University in the US and the Gothenburg University in Sweden.”

Furthermore, the ranking awarded the UJ four stars out of five, excelling in the categories of teaching, employability, innovation and inclusivity. 

The university was also included in the last year’s QS World University Ranking, making it to the category of the top 551-600 universities worldwide. 

Higher Education Minister Adel Tweisi told The Jordan Times that he “would like to congratulate the UJ for this achievement, hoping that they will keep moving up on the list, both at the regional and international levels”.

When asked about the factors that could have been improved, Manager of UoJ’s Quality Assurance Centre Faleh Sawair told The Jordan Times that “the university’s position could have been better if the proportion of students to faculty members was not affected by the financial status of the university”.

“The percentage of foreign faculty members is not satisfactory for Jordanian universities compared with other universities in the region due to the legislation that limits the percentage of foreign faculty members,” he continued.  

Furthermore, Sawair pointed out that “the university is not specialised in scientific and health specialties, which negatively affects the number of scientific research for each faculty member and the number of scientific citations of such research” .

Other Jordanian universities were also featured in the report.The Jordanian University for Science and Technology (JUST) stood close to UJ at position 14th, followed by Yarmouk University (29th), Princess Sumaya University for Technology (42th) and the Hashemite University (48th). 

JUST achieved a rating of five stars, excelling in categories such as teaching, employability, internationalisation, facilities, innovation and inclusiveness. 

“Our target is to be internationally ranked rather than regionally”, said JUST President Omar Al Jarrah, adding that JUST is “looking forward to enter the QS list of top 500 universities worldwide by 2019”.

“We are now positioned as one of the 500 best universities in the world according to the Times Higher Education ranking, and we are looking towards further improvement with the JUST 2020 transformation programme,” he added. 

 “Jordanian universities are not far from appearing at the lists of top 500 universities developed by more prominent rankings such as Shanghai’s”, said Tweisi, adding that he “appreciates the challenges that our public universities are facing, but good governance will overcome them”.