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Who on earth would rank University of Leeds ahead of Stanford University?

This ranking is kind of stupid because it favors universities from small countries. "Countries" such as Quatar, Luxemburg, or Hong Kong have almost automatically a lot of foreigners studying there. Also, the ranking does not seem to take international diversity into account. Vienna for example may have a large share of foreigners but most of them will be German which doesnt really make it an international place. So adjust for country size and add a measure of diversity!

Qatar over Cambridge? Auckland over MIT? While I'm gratified Imperial is international in outlook, this list shouldn't be construed as a metric of quality. Also, "proportion of international staff, proportion of international students and proportion of research papers published with at least one co-author from another country" measure three very different attributes. The proportion of international students, in the US, commonly reflects inability to recruit PhD students within the US, where other training paths or careers might be more attractive.

Hilarious!!! Imho it's pure nonsense to present your in such a ranking, because these data have no sense in se. Really hilarious the Qatar University leading the ranking! Ahahah, in Qatar less than 15% of the population has Qatari nationality... what would you expect? To have only Qataris in the main University of the country? On top of that, Qatar Univeristy is the symbol of Qatarization of the country, not of interazionalization at all! I know now how to make my University very international according to THE: deprive most of the citizens of my country of their citizenship! Isn't it a smart idea? As already pointed out by lukas.mer, the *diversity* should be the indicator that you should survey. -.-

How can eight of the top 12 universities in the world be in the United States (according to the THE) but only eight of the top 200 be ranked for their international outlook. The methodology must be fundamentally flawed - as my research prof. once said, "if you put rubbish in, you will get rubbish out." I am so sorry that the once venerable Times of London has stooped this low to publish and make money. This kind of populist approach, lacking in any serious forethought, threatens to undermine your reputation as the world's leading survey of higher education. Please be careful!

The criteria here may correlate with internationalisation with all the inherent merits without necessarily correlating with bestness.

The British universities are not international. They come under European Union. They give first preference to European Union citizens. They are not even considering the citizens of the British Commonwealth. It is utter falsehood to claim that British universities are international.

Thanks for all your comments - I'm the editor of the THE World University Rankings. Firstly, I think we need to be very clear, rbrindley_257565, that this is not a money making exercise, but an exercise in transparency. The annual THE World University Rankings, last published on 1 October 2015, employ 13 separate performance indicators covering the full range of a university's activities - teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. They are widely acknowledged as the gold standard in global university evaluation, and a powerful indicator of all-round excellence. This table is simply a cut of the overall World University Rankings data, designed to encourage people to look beyond the composite scores, and drill down into the data. This table simply looks at the three indicators that make up "international outlook" - the proportion of international student, international faculty, and internationally co-authored papers - nothing more, nothing less. These simply help us to get a sense of how international a university is, against these simple, but powerful, indicators. They are not a proxy for excellence, but they nevertheless help us get a deeper and richer understanding of the global higher education landscape, and raise interesting questions about the role of geography and money, for example. It is my view that a university's international outlook is key to its potential - universities are all about talent, so an ability to draw in talent from all over the world is vital.

So, one of the measures for this 'data collection' fad is the number of internationally co-authored papers. Never mind what is in them, whether this is based on quality or not. Clearly, smaller countries that have not so many academics of their own, will recruit from outside. Scotland is a good example for that. I enjoy the international profile of my faculty, but what does it measure? Nothing much at all. It is presented as a great achievement by a university to be high up on such a league table, but if we are honest as academics, we know how meaningless it is! Just as most KPIs that are now used against academic freedom and true excellence, and against the idea of a what university really means. Just go and read some Humboldt!

What about Jacobs University Bremen? (students from more than 110 different nationalities and a ratio of at least 75% international students at undergraduate level)

I have a question: why is it that German universities perform so poorly in this index ? Only one on the list, although they sell themselves as being very international. Any comment on this ? it is striking when one looks at the list...

Have you heard about Minerva Schools at KGI? 78% international students from 35+ countries living in 7 different cities in the four years of the degree as part of their studies. Hard to get more global than that.