The best universities are global institutes which attract students and researchers from around the world, according to Times Higher Education. The editorial board of the publication compiled a list of the top 200 institutions, but the RUG is not on it.

The RUG likes to emphasize that it is ‘an internationally oriented university’, ranked in the top 100 of ‘influential ranking lists’. However, according to Times Higher Education, the RUG is not international enough to make the list. The editorial board looks at how many international employees and students an institution has, as well as the number of research studies which the university has published with at least one international co-author. Groningen does not score high enough in these areas.

Master’s students

RUG president Sibrand Poppema is not surprised. ‘The reason for this lies in the fact that this list only looks at master’s degrees and not at bachelor programmes. If you look at the total number of international bachelor’s students, the RUG has a higher percentage than Maastricht, Delft, Twente and Wageningen, for example. However, if you only take into account master’s students, then the RUG has a lower percentage in comparison to the Dutch universities which did make the list’, Poppema stated via spokesman Gernant Deekens.

At the top of the list is Qatar University, with half of all students coming from abroad. The university’s high score can be largely attributed to its many international collaborations. The highest-scoring Dutch university is Maastricht (in 14th place.). Half of the students and one-third of employees are foreign. Additionally, almost all programmes are English-taught.

Delft is in 90th place, followed by Twente (115), Rotterdam (142), Tilburg (162), Eindhoven (168), Wageningen (174) and the University of Amsterdam in 195th place.

Ambition

The RUG aspires to be in the top 200. Deekens: ‘By profiling the master’s degrees and encouraging bachelor’s students to study their master’s degrees in Groningen, we want to improve our ranking.’