Global BUzz

The new Times Higher Education results for ranking of the World’s Most International Universities 2017 have been released, with some significant changes in comparison to last year.

Last year, Qatar University topped the list followed by the University of Luxembourg, as the rankings were based on the Times Higher Education World University Rankings’ international outlook indicator.  This indicator is based on looking at the:

• ‘International-to-domestic-student ratio
• ‘Interational-to-domestic-staff ratio: The ability of a university to attract undergraduates, postgraduates and faculty from all over the planet is key to its success on the world stage.
• ‘International collaboration: The proportion of a university’s total research journal publications that have at least one international co-author and reward higher volumes.’

This year, both Qatar University and the University of Luxembourg, scoring 99.9 and 99.8 respectively last year, dropped completely off the 200 long list for the World’s Most International Universities! This is directly due to a change in methodology, with this year’s rankings including a key component worth 25% of the total score: the university’s international reputation.  The methodology states that ‘this is a measure of the ratio of international votes to domestic votes that the institution achieved in THE’s annual invitation-only Academic Reputation Survey’, and that only those institutions receiving over 100 votes were eligible for inclusion in the rankings this year.  The Academic Reputation Survey is used to inform two key indicators of the 13 used to create the annual Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and are used for the annual Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings.

Top 200 most international universities in the world 2016

Thus, results this year were significantly different from those published last year, highlighting just how important metrics and indicators are in producing something as influential as these rankings, recognised worldwide and increasingly relevant for HE providers.  Clearly, consensus of what it means to truly be a global university is still under scrutiny, while internationalisation in HE continues to unfold in various socio-economic and political ways.

This year, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and Australia are home to the ten most international universities in the world.  The ETH Zurich-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology secured first position, up from 7th last year.  It was followed by the École  Polytechnique  Fédérale  de Lausanne which climbed up from 4th position.  In the UK, Imperial College London climbed five places to 5, maintaining its position as top UK international university and scoring above the Oxford University, University of Cambridge, University College London and the London School of Economics.  Overall, however, the UK HE sector dominated the top ten positions with five universities securing places.

The World’s Most International Universities 2017

THE’s analysis also reveals that there is a ‘positive relationship between a university’s international outlook and its research influence’ which is based on citations, but there is a great need to widen our criteria and even ambitions of what makes a university global.

No doubt will these rankings be susceptible to current changes in attitudes, perceptions and policies towards immigration seen worldwide.