However, four of Israel’s six ranked universities have fallen in rank over the last year, due largely to a decline in reputation, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a British company that specializes in the analysis of higher education institutions around the world, reported Tuesday.
Hebrew University ranked No. 198 in this year’s ranking, down from No. 177 last year.
Bar-Ilan University was the only Israeli university to improve its ranking. It made the top 500 for the first time ever in the QS World University Rankings. It was ranked No. 477, having significantly improved its research impact and employer recognition over the last year.
Tel Aviv University declined to No. 255 from No. 230, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology fell to No. 330 from No. 291, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev dropped to No. 471 from No. 446. The University of Haifa remained steady in the 700-750 range.
The main reason for the downward trend was declining performance in QS’s Academic Reputation metric, which accounts for the sentiments of more than 130,000 academics regarding university quality and is the metric weighted most highly in the rankings, QS said in a press release. All six of Israel’s ranked universities have seen their relative performance in this metric fall over the last year.
They also have experienced drops in the International Student Ratio metric, though this is only weighted at 5% of the overall score, QS said.
Despite these declines, Israeli universities continue to perform strongly in terms of research impact and citations per faculty. In this metric, four of Israel’s six universities ranked among the top 300. TAU placed No. 16 in this category, and Bar-Ilan University ranked among the top 100.
“Though the overall picture for Israeli higher education is not a positive one this year, there are promising signs in the underlying data,” QS spokesman Jack Moran said. “For example, five of Israel’s universities have improved their employer-recognition scores over the last 10 months.
“As students become increasingly concerned about the relationship between higher education and employability outcomes, the evidence suggests that Israel’s universities are producing graduates who are enjoying rising respect among hiring managers. To stem the overall performance decline, it will be necessary to ensure that Israel’s universities increase their engagement with the global academic community.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ranked No. 1 for the 10th straight year. The University of Oxford rose to No. 2 for the first time since 2006. Stanford University and the University of Cambridge were tied at No. 3. Harvard University was No. 5.
Mainland China had two of the world’s top 20 universities for the first time ever, after Peking University made the top 20.
The best university outside of the US and the UK was Switzerland’s ETH Zurich, at No. 8.