Solomon2
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The 2010 ranking makes a great deal of sense; it's based on stuff from the year before, which is partly based on refereed journals, many of which takes months to process, etc.KAUST
Established September 23, 2009
Academic Ranking of World Universities 2010
Rank : 0
KAUST Quick Facts (as of 2016) - Link -
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So, how did KAUST do it? My guess is that the Sauds leveraged their ARAMCO and G.E. connections to encourage these companies to push their sponsored and associated professors from American universities to KAUST. The students followed. So did the publications trail of the students and professors, who now list KAUST as their university, rather than wherever they were before. So in a short span of six years KAUST goes from zero to hero.
However, I wonder if people really appreciate the huge investment that the Saudis must have made for this to work. Not just transferring hundreds of millions of dollars from here to there, not just the infrastructure, but the negotiations with people in the U.S. and S.A., the management challenges, and so on. And I wonder if what Saudis have learned about Western-style university administration may be even more valuable than what Saudi students themselves have learned.
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