World's Best Universities: International Students and International Faculty Factors

U.S.News & World Report's World's Best Universities rankings, based on the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings, identified these to be world's top universities in 2009.

Schools by Location The Top 200 Asian and Middle Eastern Australian and New Zealand British and European Canadian Schools by Subject The Top 200 Arts and Humanities Engineering and IT Life Sciences and Biomedicine Natural & Physical Sciences Social Sciences Methodologies World's Best Universities Methodology Subject Area Rankings Methodology Academic Peer Review Citations per Faculty Member Student-to-Faculty Ratio Employer Review Survey International Student and International Faculty Factors Weightings and Statistical Scores About the World's Best Universities Rankings

How is the degree to which a school has become a more international institution evaluated?

International reputation is an undeniable component of today's world-class universities. How better to evaluate that than to assess to what degree international students and international faculty are attracted to a given institution? The factors used to measure this quality for the 2009 U.S. News World's Best Universities rankings (which are based on data from the THE-QS World University Rankings, produced in association with QS Quacquarelli Symonds) are the proportion of international students and the proportion of international faculty who are at that institution.

These factors each represent 5 percent of a school's overall rating in the World's Best Universities rankings. The separate international students score and international faculty score are calculated based on those proportions.

These scores are two performance indicators that can be used to compare institutions worldwide because the data used cross international borders. They are also factors that help determine the degree to which a school has become a world-class university. The international migration of students and faculty is a major trend in higher education. This trend is recognized in these rankings simply by the proportion of full-time registered students and faculty who are citizens of a nation different from the one in which the university is located, as these statistics are relatively easy to collect. Various other measures, such as exchange student numbers, are being collected and compiled and may be included in the future.