On Thursday, January 9, 2019, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research announced its annual ranking of the best public and private universities during a conference in Erbil. 

Minister Aram Mohammed said that the assessment was based on the amount and quality of scientific research that an institution sponsored combined with its academic staff, international activities, cultural activities, relationship with the society, and student feedback.

“The national ranking has brought obvious changes over the past five years,” he added. “The most important being the documentation of the quality and scientific activities of the universities.”

The minister said that analysis of the data, which was provided by the universities, helps the ministry to evaluate each institution and develop plans to improve the higher education sector.

Mohammed said that in 2015 scholars at the Region’s universities had only published 79 instances of scientific research in journals indexed by International Scientific Indexing (ISI). In 2019, that number had increased to 1,424, an 820 percent jump.

He added there were an estimated 5,000 Google Scholar Citations for academics from the Region in 2015, but that the number had increased to 68,561 in 2019, which he said showed the growing impact of the work being done in the Kurdistan Region.

The universities were divided into three groups, although none met the qualifications to be included in the top tier.

The minister said that the universities were listed alphabetically and not by score within each group.

 

Public Universities

Group B:

Hawler Medical University

Salahaddin University

Soran University

University of Duhok

University of Koya

University of Kurdistan-Hawler

University of Sulaimani

 

Group C:

Duhok Polytechnic University

Erbil Polytechnic University

Charmo University

Sulaimani Polytechnic University

University of Garmian

University of Raparin

University of Zakho

 

Group D:

Halabja University

 

Private Universities

Group B:

American University of Iraq-Sulaimani

Cihan University-Erbil

Komar University of Science and Technology

Newroz University

Tishk International University

University of Human Development

 

Group C:

Cihan University-Duhok

Cihan University-Sulaimani

Knowledge University

Lebanese French University

 

Group D:

Bayan University

Catholic University

International University of Erbil