London universities are most attractive for international students

It means London has more top global universities than the whole of the USA, Canada and France combined.

The highest ranked institution in the capital is Imperial College London, in 10th.

The league table compiled by Times Higher Education, analyses the proportion of international staff and international students at each university. It also takes into account the number of research papers published that have at least one co-author from another country.

University College London (18^th), King’s College London (20^th), London School of Economics and Political Science (22^nd), Queen Mary University of London (23^rd) and Royal Holloway, University of London (30^th) all feature in the top 30 most international institutions.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson commented: “London not only has the greatest concentration of top class universities of any city in the world it is also the most diverse and welcoming. At the cutting edge of innovation and creativity, and with its unique cultural richness, London continues to have unrivalled international appeal attracting the brightest academic and student brains on the planet.”

The most international institution is Qatar University – the first time a Middle Eastern institution has topped the list. It knocks five-time leader Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland down to fourth place.

The rest of the top 10 is filled by the University of Luxembourg (second), University of Hong Kong (third), University of Geneva (fifth), University of Macau (sixth), ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (seventh), University of St Gallen (eighth), National University of Singapore (ninth) and Imperial College London (tenth). Overall 28 countries are represented in the top 200 list.

Phil Baty, Times Higher Education World University Rankings editor said: “An institution’s global outlook is one of the key markers of a prestigious university. The top institutions hire faculty from all over the world, attract students from a global market of top talent and collaborate with leading departments wherever they happen to be based.

“All institutions in this list deserve to celebrate – being named one of the most international universities in the world is a sign of great potential, competitiveness and dynamism.”

Imperial College London president Alice Gast said: “Imperial’s international outlook is fundamental to its excellence. The College’s Strategy 2015-20 makes it clear that we succeed by recruiting great people from all over the world, collaborating across boundaries, and working to inform decision makers on issues that matter to global society.

“No university can achieve world-class status without a global community of staff, students and collaborators. Innovation often emerges from the creative synergies that occur when people from different cultures, disciplines and sectors come together.

“We intend to build on our global position and thus we are investing in opportunities like our joint seed fund with MIT to encourage our researchers to collaborate on early stage and risky research. We also seek to attract world leaders like President Xi Jinping who visited the College to learn about our extraordinary wealth of education and research partnerships with China.”

TOP LONDON INSTITUTIONS