After a year of decline, Israeli universities made a strong comeback in 2018 as both the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Hebrew University of Jerusalem made the list of leading 100 universities in the world.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities was released Tuesday by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy firm.
The Technion climbed the Shanghai rankings to 77th place after placing 93rd in 2017. Hebrew University ranked in 95th place – a significant improvement to 2017 when it finished in the 100-150 range.
Since 2003, when the Shanghai index was launched, Hebrew University had ranked in the top 100 every year until 2017.
"The Technion's presence among the 100 leading universities in the world, for the past seven years in a row, is the result of hard work and dedication by the Technion's administration, senior staff and employees," said Technion President Professor Peretz Lavie.
The Weizmann Institute of Science ranked in the 100-150 range, similar to last year, while Tel Aviv University was in the 151-200 grouping of leading universities.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Bar-Ilan University ranked in the 401-500 grouping.
Among the criteria the Shanghai index takes into account are the number of Nobel Prize and other prestigious award winners, and the number of publications in top-tier journals.
Meanwhile, American universities dominated the top 10.
Harvard University ranked first, followed in consecutive order by Stanford; Cambridge; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of California, Berkeley; Princeton; Oxford; Columbia; the California Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago.
