Safa Jafari Safa, Office of Communications, communications@aub.edu.lb
The American University of Beirut (AUB) has been ranked as one of the world's top universities in the 2024 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings (WUR) released on June 27, 2023. In its 20th edition, this most-consulted university ranking placed AUB at a tie for 226 globally (out of 1,499 published institutions), 5th in the Arab region, and #1 in Lebanon. Moreover, AUB moved up from the top 30 percent of ranked universities in 2016 to the top 15 percent this year; the best percentile for the university ever in the ranking's history.
AUB's leap up 26 places from last year's ranking despite the increased competition can only be explained by its continued commitment to producing impactful research and outstanding graduates while maintaining a sustainable existence.
This year, QS implemented unprecedented methodological enhancements in celebration of its 20th anniversary to reflect the growth in data availability and the changes in priorities over two decades to match those of Gen Z and Alpha.
AUB scored highly in several indicators, tying at #70 in the new Sustainability indicator—which is one of AUB's best performance indicators along with Employment Outcomes, where we are ranked 40th worldwide. The latter indicator reflects AUB's ability to ensure a high level of employability for its graduates and its commitment to graduating future leaders. Employer Reputation, which is based this year on 617,000 employer nominations, reflects a high interest in employing AUB graduates and has remained one of AUB's best pillars over the past few years. It is ranked this year at #225 worldwide.
AUB also scored above all the QS global median indicator values, particularly in Employment Outcome. Despite the increase in research productivity over the recent decades in almost every region covered by QS, AUB had an outstanding score increase in the Citations per Faculty indicator. In fact, AUB's citations increased by 21 percent from the last six-year period.
AUB's unwavering commitment to excellence continues to be recognized around the world, this time in the world's largest and most diverse university ranking to date.
The revamped QS ranking system introduced three new metrics at a 5 percent score weight each: Sustainability, which evaluates an institution's commitment to sustainable social and environmental existence; Employment Outcomes, reflecting graduate employability as well as alumni impact; and International Research Network, which estimate the richness of the selected international research partners for a given institution. These new indicators were designed to provide institutions with insight to assess their performance in areas that better serve the generations to come. The rankings also adjusted the weighting of some existing indicators by reducing the Academic Reputation to 30 percent and Faculty Student Ratio to 10 percent while increasing the Employer Reputation to 15 percent. Indicators that remained unchanged are: International Faculty (5 percent), International Students Ratio (5 percent), and Citations per Faculty ratio (20 percent).