BRUSSELS, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) on Tuesday launched U-Multirank, a new global university ranking, which assesses the performance of more than 850 higher education institutions worldwide.
U-Multirank breaks new ground by producing multi-dimensional listings rating universities on a much wider range of factors than existing international rankings, EU statement said.
The idea is to avoid simplistic league tables which can result in misleading comparisons between institutions of very different types or mask significant differences in quality between courses at the same university.
It was set up with 2 million euros (around 2.7 million U.S. dollars) in funding from the EU.
Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth said, "U-Multirank will enable students to make more informed decisions about where to study and give us a more accurate picture of how universities perform."
U-Multirank will base its assessments on five key areas, including research, teaching and learning, international orientation, knowledge transfer and regional.