Wednesday, January 28, 2015

The Most International Universities

Times Higher Education has released its list of the top 100 most international universities. This is simply the International Outlook indicator extracted from last year's world rankings. It counts the proportion of international staff and faculty and the percentage of papers with  international collaborators.

The top three are in Switzerland. The National University of Singapore is fourth and Ecole Polytechnique in Paris fifth. The Ecole is up from 28th place last year which probably means a "clarification of data" of some sort.

So what makes a university international?

It helps a lot to be located in an English speaking country. The UK, and Australia get high scores.

What is more noticeable is that many  small countries to do well especially if they are located next to a big country with the the same or similar language and culture -- Switzerland, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, Austria, Denmark,  Big countries like Mainland China, the USA and India do not.

Perhaps THE (and QS) should think about the implications of its methods. Does it make sense to count as international a student who moves a few miles from Fermanagh to Galway, Bavaria to Austria or Johor to Singapore?

Perhaps the THE should count the whole of the EU as a single country or give extra points for students and faculty who cross an ocean rather than an increasingly meaningless line on a map. Perhaps also, Macau and Hong Kong should be reunited methodologically with the Mainland. What about counting out of state students at US universities?




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