King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dammam has been awarded the 216th position in the QS World University Rankings for 2013-14.
Other Saudi universities, which were also listed within the rankings, include King Saud University and King Abdulaziz University, categorized in the 253rd and 360th rankings respectively.
American and British universities occupied the top 10 ranks, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recognized as the leading university and Harvard University falling second place.
British-based Cambridge University came third, while University College London (UCL), Imperial College London and Oxford University followed. The next 10 positions were conferred to Stanford, Yale, the University of Chicago, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Princeton, the last two sharing 10th place.
Arab institutions of higher education were largely absent from the first-tier classifications.
The list, which ranked 800 universities around the world, puts institutions that fall after the 400th position into groups. Imam Muhammad Islamic University of Riyadh is in the 491-500 category, Umm Al-Qura of Makkah in the 551-600 group and King Khaled University of the Asir province in the 601–650 category.
Other universities in the GCC, which were classified in the list include Emirates University in the 421-430 group, Sharja’s American University in the 431-430 group, Sultan Qaboos University in the 501-550 and Abu Dhabi University in the 601-650, Qatar University in 551- 600 and Kuwait and Bahrain universities in the 701+ group.
India’s prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi is three positions behind KFUPM of Dammam. The Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings for 2013-14 rated King Abdulaziz University as the top university in the Gulf in a study published last month.
In addition, King Saud University was ranked 186th among the top 200 universities in 2011, according to the Webometrics Rankings of World Universities. It was also classified as the top university in the Arab world and the 19th in Asia.
Most of the Kingdom’s 25 universities specialize in science and technology. The government has recently spent billions of riyals for the advancement of education and research in the country.
