Israel's higher education institutions have experienced a troubling drop in their global status this year. The Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa was the only Israeli university to make it into the top 100 list of universities worldwide in the 2017 Academic Ranking of World Universities by the Shanghai Ranking consultancy organization, which ranks the world's top 500 universities annually. The Technion was ranked 93rd, a drop of 24 spots compared to 2016, when it ranked 69th. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, ranked among the top 100 schools worldwide since 2003 and 87th in 2016, dropped out of the top 100 list and was placed in the 101-150 group, as was the Weizmann Institute of Science. Tel Aviv University retained its 2016 ranking in the 151-200 category, as did Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, placed in the 401-500 category. Bar-Ilan University was the only Israeli institution to mark an improvement: After dropping out of the top 500 list altogether in 2016, it made it into 2017's 401-500 category. The ranking were dominated by American universities: Harvard topped the list, followed by Stanford, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology coming fourth and the University of California, Berkeley, in fifth place. Britain's Cambridge ranked third. "I'm very pleased that the Technion has been included in the list of the world's top 100 universities for the past five years," Technion President Peretz Lavie said. He urged decision-makers to "understand that Israel will be unable to remain a science and technology power without a massive investment in research infrastructure." The Hebrew University said it was studying the ranking. A university official said that "Israeli research as a whole appears to be experiencing a troubling decline compared to the growing status of universities in the Far East, especially in China." A statement by the Council for Higher Education said, "Since 2011, there has been a turnaround in the budget allocated to the higher education system, as reflected by an increase, in billions of shekels, in the budgets for research universities, which in previous years was also reflected in a rise [in their ranking] on international indices." The ranking "is characterized by annual fluctuations, so it is best to look at the institutions' achievements with a long-term perspective," the statement said.
