Qatar University (QU) made a significant improvement in the Times Higher Education (THE) Young University Rankings 2018 by advancing its position from 101-150 in 2017 to 87 in the 2018 rankings.

THE Young University Rankings list the world’s best universities that are aged 50 years or under. The 2018 rankings include 250 institutions from 55 different countries, reported Gulf Times.

In calculating the top young universities, THE Young University Rankings 2018 used 13 performance indicators to assess research-intensive universities across all their core missions — teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

The performance indicators were grouped into five areas — teaching - the learning environment (30%), research - volume, income and reputation (30%), citations - research influence (30%), international outlook - staff, students and research (7.5%), and industry income - knowledge transfer (2.5%).
“The Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2018 show an improvement of QU’s last year performance as it was ranked 101-150,” said QU president Dr Hassan Al Derham.

“Since its inception in 1977, QU has been a leading institution of academic and research excellence in the region providing high-quality undergraduate and graduate programs aligned with the international standards. This achievement demonstrates QU’s pivotal role in contributing to Qatar’s stated ambitions towards a knowledge-based economy, and in providing the local and international labour market with distinguished graduates who will contribute to the country’s growth,” he added.

“The recent Gulf crisis did not affect QU’s research quality and quantity. The University currently holds 32.9% of the overall percentage (70%) of institutions in Qatar which means that papers emerging from QU that are co-authored with international researchers make up one-third of all internationally-collaborated papers from Qatar as a whole,” added the top official.