Three universities – from Egypt, Morocco and Puerto Rico – which were initially reported as achieving globally competitive rankings are now missing from the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) list of the top 700 universities.
The three “vanishing” institutions discovered by Research Africa are Al-Azhar University, in Egypt; Al Akhawayn University, in Morocco; and the University of Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean.
Ben Sowter, the head of the QS Intelligence Unit, first told Research Africa that Al-Azhar University was one of three Egyptian universities appearing in the rankings for the first time.
The other two – Alexandria University and Ain Shams University – are in the database, released a week ago.
Al-Azhar University, which began as a madressa more than 1,000 years ago and is considered the second-oldest degree-granting university in Egypt, was missing from the list.
Simona Bizzozero, the head of public relations at QS, said Al-Azhar University had been omitted “because of a technical issue that we are resolving.”
“Each university is linked to a profile on our site,” Bizzozero said.
“Those that didn’t have an updated profile didn’t switch on live,” she said from London, UK.
She was then asked why Egypt’s Ain Shams University, another new entrant, had therefore made it onto the rankings.
“If you go onto our site and click you will find yourself in a profile. Some profiles are richer than others. Others don’t have a profile and didn’t appear automatically,” Bizzozero said.
It would seem, however, that some of the confusion came as QS released the list in stages. Approximately 700 of the 2,000 universities under consideration are in the final list.
“The draft table that was circulated was not wrong, it just featured a greater number of institutions than ended up being published,” claimed Danny Byrne, the editor of TopUniversities.com, which publishes the list of university rankings.
It would appear that some of the QS staff did not distinguish between the 2,000 universities in the database and the final shortlist.
A geologist, Mohammad Hassaan Mohammad Awad, is vice-president of graduate studies and research at Al-Azhar University, which is located in Cairo.
Since 1961, the university has been providing secular education in addition to its religious curriculum.
Pending any other changes by QS, this means that Egypt has four universities in their list of the top 700 universities. The other two are the public Cairo University and the private American University of Cairo.
Read more in “QS backpedals on Morocco university rating” in this edition.