King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) and King Sa'ud University (KSU) maintained their advanced positions in the international ranking of the universities according to the prestigious 2010 rankings released by Times Higher Education (THE) based in London. KFUPM was ranked 349 in the prime ranking list, placing it among the top universities in the Kingdom, while King Saud was placed 363. One estimate puts the number of recognized Higher Education (HE) institutions across the world at more than ten thousand.
Dr. Khalid Al-'Ankari, the Minister of Higher Education ascertained that this remarkable success reflects the rapid and significant strides in teaching and research quality in the two universities and constitute evidence of excellence in both of them.
The Times completely revamped its methodology for this year’s list, which is now based on rigorous data provided by Thomson Reuters and reputation surveys of over 13,000 verified academics conducted by Ipsos Mori, a market research company based in London. The rankings are based on performance indicators across five broad categories: teaching (30 percent), citation impact (32.5 percent), research (30 percent), international mix (5 percent) and industry income (2.5 percent).
It is worth mentioning that the first appearance of the Times Higher Education Ranking, formerly known as the QS World University Rankings was in the year 2004. Until the year 2009 it was published jointly by the Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds, a company specializing in education and research. However, this year the magazine formatted a number of objective criteria and developed richer and deeper analysis methods in order to increase the accuracy and the transparency level in handling the annual information schedules of the universities in addition to the feedback provided by the universal academic society.
The enhanced ranking standards includes other detailed information such as the number of PhDs awarded annually by the university, the number of PhD graduates compared with bachelor degree graduates and the ratio of the number of research publications to the number of faculty members