SHAFAQNA– Iraq‘s Baghdad University has entered the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019 for the first time.
Baghdad University has appeared in the rankings of the top 1,250 research universities around the world, with the UK’s Oxford and Cambridge Universities taking the top two spots.
The University of Baghdad has appeared in other international rankings but makes a first appearance in the Times Higher tables, in the 801 to 1,000 band, BBC reported.
Iraq’s ministry of higher education said in a statement that Baghdad University achieved a new accomplishment by entering the Times Ranking, after its researchers submitted more than 7,000 researches to Scopus international database”.
Times Higher Education World University Rankings is considered as the second best global ranking after Academic Shanghai Ranking,” it added, Arab news reported.
Mr Phil Baty, editorial director of the rankings, told the BBC that Baghdad University had been “very strong in international co-operation” and this reflected the importance being placed on universities in post-war reconstruction.
The University of Baghdad was the first university in Iraq, located in the middle of Baghdad city. It is considered the second largest university in the Arab region. Baghdad’s first college of law opened in 1908. Then, the college of medicine opened in 1927. In 1957, the University of Baghdad was officially established and was able to award degrees in its own name. The university has 24 colleges, 3 high study institutes and 9 centers spread in four main campuses. It includes 171 study majors, 6477 undergraduate students and 7517 postgraduate students, top universities.
It missed by a year the distinction of being Iraq’s first modern university, trailing the Jesuit Al-Hikma University, which it took over following the Baathist coup of 1968. Baghdad’s more recent university affiliations include the universities of Basra and Mosul.
Its stated vision is to be “a pioneering and productive cognitive university that competes with other universities internationally”. Al-Jadriya is the oldest and most significant of its campuses. It is located on an isthmus in central Baghdad bounded on three sides by the River Tigris and is characterised by a distinguished architectural heritage. Initial constructions in the 1960s were designed by a group including Walter Gropius, while the extensions of 1982 were under the care of Hisham Ashkouri, a 1970 Baghdad graduate.
Other campuses are located at Bab al-Muadham, Ali Wizariya and Nahda Cross Road which are used all day long with around one third of the student body taking their courses in the evening.
The nine research centres include those devoted to Palestinian studies, scientific Arab heritage and market research and consumer protection, while journals published by the university’s eight colleges of science include the Iraqi Journals of Science (founded 1959), Physics (2002) and Tropical Diseases (2004), each appearing four times a year in English and Arabic.
Much was destroyed by military action in 2003 with the College of Fine Arts for instance losing 70,000 books. A proportion of these were replaced, from a wish list provided by the college in 2018 by those attending an artist’s installation of empty shelves and blank books in Toronto.