IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Rising in Rank and in Excellence

 
 Times Higher Education’s “Golden Age” University Ranking for 2018 has recently ranked The University of Jordan as one of the best 151- 200 universities in the world. Times Higher Education announced on its website that the “Golden Age” ranking focuses attention on universities that were established between the years of 1945 and 1967 and, are, therefore, universities that have been operating for approximately 50 to 80 years. The organization also stated on its website that the title of the ranking, “Golden Age,” refers to “the Golden Age in global higher education, characterized by rapid university expansion and increasing investment in research” (See Times Website here). The University of Jordan has indeed made some cutting edge advancements in teaching and research in the last decade or so, working actively to bring the best there possibly is to the classroom and to research in the Middle East. Consequently, UJ has recently focused on applying interactive and multimedia techniques and tools to the classroom in order to expand and improve the learning experience, such as the “Blended and Flipped Learning” initiative.

 The organization’s ranking methodology for the “Golden Age” classification uses the same criteria that the THE uses for its World University Rankings. The methodology focuses on 13 performance indicators. The first of these indicators is teaching (30%), which focuses mainly on the university’s academic reputation (15%), student-instructor ratio (4.5%), PhDs awarded to bachelor’s degrees awarded ratio (2.25%), PhDs awarded to academic staff ratio (6%), and the university’s income (2.25%). Research was another significant indicator used in the methodology (30%)  and this included UJ’s research reputation (18%), research income (6%), and the number of research papers published for each researcher through Scopus (6%). Another substantial indicator in the methodology  concentrates on the number of citations UJ obtained through Scopus (30%). In this indicator, UJ’s research influence is measured by capturing the number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally. Other performance indicators focused on UJ’s international outlook such as the international to domestic student ratio (2.5%), the international to domestic instructor ratio (2.5%), and international research collaboration (2.5%). Finally, the last of these performance indicators was UJ’s industry income, which also received a 2.5% percentile.

 The University of Jordan was ranked among reputable universities from around the world such as The University of California, San Diego, and Warwick University, which were both ranked in the top 10. 
 

  • 7/26/2018