Forty-two Iraqi universities enter the new QS Arab ranking

The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research announced on Friday the inclusion of forty-two Iraqi universities, including educational institutions in the Kurdistan Region, in the QS Arab Universities Ranking for the year two thousand and twenty-seven, out of a total of two hundred and ninety-eight Arab universities evaluated in the assessment issued on October the fifteenth, two thousand and twenty-six. A statement issued by the ministry indicated that the University of Baghdad ranked first locally within this classification, followed sequentially by Al-Mustansiriya, Anbar, Al-Nahrain, and Kufa universities. The ministry pointed out that the number of listed Iraqi academic institutions has witnessed an increase to reach forty-two universities, after being limited to thirty-six universities in the previous edition. It clarified that the aforementioned ranking, which was launched in two thousand and fourteen, relies in its evaluation of higher education institutions' performance on ten fundamental criteria, spearheaded by academic reputation at a rate of thirty percent, followed by employer reputation at twenty percent, the faculty-to-student ratio at fifteen percent, in addition to the international research network at ten percent, as well as other criteria including web impact, research output, scientific citations, and the proportions of international faculty members and students. The ministry affirmed that the evaluation of research performance is based on Scopus database data, covering citations and scientific output alongside other indicators adopted in calculating final results.