According to the 4th edition of the U-Multirank publication for comparing universities, published on Thursday 30 March, European universities are achieving good results in areas of academic staff and student mobility.
This classification system is funded by the Erasmus + initiative and helps to compare university performances in 16 different areas such as research, teaching and learning, the transfer of knowledge, international orientation and regional commitment, on the basis of 39 different indicators. It was launched by the European Commission in 2014, mainly as a tool to counterbalance the Shanghai System based on the volume of research publications, which is still dominated by English-speaking universities. The U-Multirank classification system currently covers 1,500 universities in 99 different countries (56% in Europe, 19% in North America, 20% in Asia and 5% in Oceana, Latin America and Africa).
This year’s data reveal that business studies is the most international discipline, attracting students and staff from all over the world. These data also reveal that more than half of all EU universities achieve the best scores in the area of student mobility. Half of these universities also attract international academic personnel and around 70% are characterised by their participation in joint international publications. In this connection, a French, Spanish and German university are among the top three positions in the classification for applied knowledge partnerships.
The Commission has said that it will take these results into account in the project it will be presenting later this year on the modernisation of higher education. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)