tion in visual form.9 Other studies use the ratio results in order to classify and
group universities into clusters of universities with similar ratio values. The affilia-
tion to a certain cluster indicates the university’s success in regard to international-
ization.
Ayouibi and Massoud (2007) combine the ratio results with an analysis of the uni-
versity’s articulated commitment for internationalization in its mission statement.
To determine the strength of an institution’s international commitment, they
screen universities’ mission statements for keywords linked to internationalization.
For example, based on the numerical scores in mission statement content analysis
and on ratio results, UK universities were segmented into the following four clus-
ters: International losers group, international speakers group, international winners
group and international actors group.
The American Council on Education (ACE 2005) measures internationalization
of US Research Universities in a somewhat different way. A nationally distributed
survey contained a list of questions grouped into the following six dimensions:
Articulated commitment, Academic offerings, Organizational infrastructure, Ex-
ternal funding, Institutional investments in faculty and International students, and
student programs. In order to create an “Internationalization Index” all answers of
survey questions were coded on a five-point scale, ranging from “zero” (0) to
“high” (4) levels of internationalization. The overall performance of a university in
regard to internationalization and its performance in each dimension was then
derived by summing the values of variables being measured in the survey.
4.2. Criticisms of existing evaluation methods
The previously mentioned methods of measuring internationalization of universi-
ties fail to provide a holistic and complete picture of internationalization achieve-
ments. In general ratios are able to document quantities but not the quality of
relationships. For instance, the pure ratio of incoming or outgoing students com-
pared to total students doesn’t provide any information about the interaction be-
tween home and foreign students or about the learning and reflection process of
students. As the American Council on Education (2005, p. 20) states in its conclu-
sion: “The mere presence of international students on a campus is not a major
contributor to internationalization - more important are initiatives that provide
9 See for instance Elkin/Devjee/Farnsworth (2005): Visualising the internationalization of uni-
versities.
10