The annual World’s Universities with Real Impact (WURI) ranking for global academic institutions examines 300 institutions from 60 countries around the world in 6 different categories: industrial application, entrepreneurial spirit, ethical value, student mobility and openness, crisis management, fourth industrial revolution. Among the institutions ranked are Harvard University, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford, and the Hebrew University.
In an extraordinary Israeli achievement, Afeka - Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering was ranked 5th in the category of crisis management due to its COVID-19 crisis management. The initiative for hybrid learning that allows every student, in the 52 classes and laboratories at the college to study simultaneously, thanks to technological investment in innovative equipment. For comparison, MIT was ranked 35th in the same category. This is the second year in a row that the college is ranked in the top ten of the crisis management categories, when last year it was ranked 9th, and this year it rose to the top five with a ranking in the fifth and honorable place.
This year a new category was added to the ranking, fourth industrial revolution which deals with progress during the fourth industrial revolution through digital technology, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud blockchain services and more. Afeka was ranked 26th in this category, while in the same category, Oxford University was ranked 49th. Afeka dedicates a laboratory for the benefit of the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, which includes advanced technologies, such as robotic arms.
Prof. Ami Moyal, President of Afeka - Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering said:"As an institution for education of engineers, we need to adapt to a changing, or crisis-ridden reality, and that is what we have done. We trained and equipped all classes and laboratories of Afeka College of Hybrid Cooperative Learning with some of the students in the class and some outside it to maintain continuous learning without compromising the educational process of our engineering students."