TAU Leaps into the Top 90 in Global Education Rankings
Friday, March 16, 2012

Times Educational Supplement "Academic Reputation Survey" measures academic stature in the international community

Tel Aviv University is now recognized as one of the top 90 universities around the world in the second international Academic Reputation Survey by media giant Thomson Reuters and the Times Educational Supplement, creator of the prestigious THE World University Rankings.

The rankings are based upon a detailed survey of 17,554 senior academic experts from more than 149 countries. Rank is determined according to an overall measure of esteem that combines data on the institutions' reputation for research and teaching.

Tel Aviv University is listed among the Top 81 to 90, reflecting the extraordinary trajectory of excellence at the university over its short 56-year existence, and recognizing the world-class quality of its research. The top 100 universities are listed, but only the top 50 are ranked serially, because, THE notes, "the differentials between institutions after the top 50 become very narrow." The second group of 50 institutions are listed in groups of 10, in alphabetical order.

Enhancing international stature

The ranking carries with it significant weight. In a competitive higher education market, a strong global reputation provides tangible, real-world benefits. It helps institutions attract and retain the best faculty, helps faculty locate the best universities for partnerships, and helps students in their quest to identify those elite universities whose names carry serious weight in the jobs market.

The survey is distributed to tens of thousands of experienced senior academics, using United Nations data to ensure that it is properly distributed to reflect the demographics of world scholarship. In terms of geographical spread, some 44 per cent of respondents in 2011 reside in the Americas, 28 per cent in Europe, 25 per cent in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and 4 per cent in Africa (these numbers have been rounded).

There is a balanced spread across disciplines — about 20 per cent of respondents hail from the physical sciences, a figure matched by engineering and technology, with 19 per cent from the social sciences, 17 per cent from clinical subjects, 16 per cent from the life sciences and 7 per cent from the arts and humanities. Scholars are questioned at the level of their specific subject discipline.

A well-deserved reputation

TAU is Israel's largest and most comprehensive center of higher learning, providing an education for 30,000 students, and one of Israel's most important research centers, engaged in more than 5,000 innovative projects in classic disciplines and in cutting-edge fields from bioinformatics to nanotechnology.

Prof. Joseph Klafter, a renowned physical chemist, has been president of Tel Aviv University since 2009.

Read more about the survey at:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/reputation-rankings.html

For more Tel Aviv University news, click here.

Keep up with the latest AFTAU news on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AFTAUnews.