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U-Multirank creates new "Higher Education Cooperation Index"


21 September 2021

In its eighth annual publication, U-Multirank showcases how universities that collaborate with their local ecosystem and across borders perform better than those that do not. This multidimensional international ranking of higher education institutions compares the performances of higher education institutions independently with seed funding from the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme.


The latest analysis of its new Cooperation Index shows two main trends:

1) Cooperation works: higher education institutions that work together with other institutions, businesses and industries, governments, regional bodies or across borders generally perform better than those that are less focused on cooperation;

2) European universities cooperate more intensively in comparison to other regions, especially in the performance areas of teaching & learning, research, knowledge exchange and internationalisation.

The top institutions of the new U-Multirank Cooperation Index are more successful in graduation in time of their graduates (82% of master students compared to 73%). Among the top cooperation institutions, the founding of graduate companies is much more common (32 graduate companies per 1000 graduates compared to only 17 among all institutions). Additionally, their publication output (size-normalised) is almost double compared to all universities.

By comparing data on almost 2,000 universities across a six-year span, U-Multirank shows that despite the global effects of COVID-19, external cooperation is still a major part of higher education. To analyse cooperation, U-Multirank developed a new ‘Cooperation Index’ taking into account seven aspects of cooperation: strategic partnerships, international joint degrees, internships, international co-publications, co-publications with industrial partners, regional co-publications and co-patents with industry.

More information is available at www.umultirank.org

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