February 5, 2007 ORT Uruguay University ranked among worlds best ORT Uruguay has been ranked among the top 500 tertiary institutions in the world according to the quality of its teaching and research, the employability of its graduates and its internationalisation. There are approximately 25,000 officially recognised higher education institutions around the world. The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) puts the ORT university on an equal footing with Germanys University of Bielefeld and Israels Ben Gurion University at 329. It is ranked eighth of the 17 Latin American institutions listed and is the only Uruguayan institution included. The top 200 in the list compiled by the THES in partnership with the international education and career development group QS, Quacquarelli Symonds, are dominated by European and North American institutions. However, ORT Uruguay ranks higher than Concordia University and the University of Quebec in Canada, Louisiana and Colorado State Universities in the USA, and Royal Holloway, University of London, in the UK. ORT Uruguay University Rector Dr Jorge Grunberg said the THES-QS ranking showed that the institution was progressing along the right path. This is an external validation of the quality of our academic work, Dr Grunberg said. Its a legitimate source of pride for the ORT community in Uruguay, the Jewish community here, and for the ORT community around the world. ORT Uruguays School of Management, Social Sciences and Architecture. He put ORT Uruguays success down to its unrelenting concentration on genuine teaching and learning quality and constant attention to what the labour market and industry needs. But there was no danger of ORT Uruguay resting on its laurels. Quality has to be built every day, Dr Grunberg said. World ORT Director General Robert Singer said ORT Uruguays listing was a magnificent achievement. It has been little more than 10 years since ORT Uruguay was officially recognised as a tertiary institution and yet it is already being compared favourably with universities that have existed for generations. We all look forward to what ORT Uruguay will have achieved in another decade, Mr Singer said. Nunzio Quacquarelli, of QS, said: The 2006/7 Rankings incorporate the views of a record 3,703 academics and a record 736 recruiters worldwide, reflecting the growing importance and awareness of this research. John OLeary, Editor of the THES, said: ‘The latest THES QS World University Rankings underlines the fierce competition between leading universities across the world. ORT Uruguay was founded as a vocational school for Jewish refugees from wartime Europe and attained official recognition as a university in 1995. Its 15,000 square metres of premises include state-of-the-art technological laboratories, research centres and libraries. It has more than 500 academics teaching 6,000 Jewish and non-Jewish students. World ORT, founded in 1880, is the worlds largest Jewish education and vocational training non-government organisation with some 200,000 beneficiaries Jewish and non-Jewish in 58 countries.