Higher Education Council Sec Gen chairs Specialised Consultative Meeting on Global Rankings of Gulf Higher Education Institutions
Manama, Feb. 15 (BNA): Dr. Diana Abdulkarim Al Jahrami, Secretary General of the Higher Education Council, chaired the Specialised Consultative Meeting on Global Rankings of Gulf Higher Education Institutions, organised by the GCC Secretariat-General’s Human and Environment Affairs sector in Riyadh.
The meeting included Khalid bin Ali Al Sunaidi, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic and Development Affairs, as well as regional and executive directors from Times Higher Education and QS, the United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in university rankings, along with leading academics and experts.
The meeting focused on developing a unified GCC vision to enhance the performance of higher education institutions, particularly improving institutional quality, aligning strategic plans with international standards, and highlighting sustainability and institutional transformation in building global academic reputation.
Participants reviewed successful GCC examples in international rankings to analyse excellence factors and explore best practices.
Participants underlined the meeting’s importance as a performance accelerator, providing an interactive platform to discuss global ranking institutions and understand their methodologies directly, helping to optimise resources and focus efforts on the indicators that most enhance the GCC’s educational reputation globally.
The meeting also emphasised the need for integration in quality assurance, aligning with the Council’s development goals and its ongoing commitment to investing in human capital and supporting sustainable development.
The meeting concluded with several key recommendations, including investing in advanced centralised laboratories and shared digital research platforms accessible to all GCC researchers to boost scientific output, standardising institutional practices for ranking data collection and verification, and creating mature institutional environments to enable informed future decisions on global university rankings.
