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IMMIGRATION

Switzerland boasts top two ‘most international’ universities in the world

Switzerland’s two federal technology institutes have been named the most international universities in the world by the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE), which warns the standing of US universities is under threat from US immigration policy.

Published: 1 February 2017 08:53 CET

Switzerland boasts top two ‘most international’ universities in the world

Photo: ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich and EPFL in Lausanne took first and second place respectively in a new ranking of 150 universities that draws on the ‘international outlook’ pillar of the THE World University Rankings.

Published on Wednesday, the new ranking is the first to take into account international reputation and is remarkable in that no US universities – which normally dominate global rankings – feature in the top 20.

The University of Hong Kong, the National University of Singapore and Imperial College London make up the top five, while British institutions – ten in total – dominate the top 20.

The University of Zurich placed 15th in the new ranking.

In a statement, Phil Baty, editor of the THE World University Rankings, said: “A university simply cannot be world class without a global outlook, a global network and a global pool of talent – and this new data released by Times Higher Education today recognizes that.”

Baty used the new ranking to warn that the current anti-immigration climate in some countries could have a major impact on the global movement of talented students and academics.

“Changing attitudes and policies towards immigration across the world have the potential to profoundly change the flow of global talent and shift the world balance of power”.

Restrictions to the mobility of academic talent in the US and UK “will inevitably harm their position, while other countries welcome talented immigrations with open arms, and their universities strengthen,” he said.

Responding to ETH Zurich’s success, the institution’s president, Lino Guzzella, said: “I know of no top university that does not have a substantial percentage of its faculty, students and workforce that are international. It is simply not possible to achieve high levels of excellence without being open to the world.”

The president of second-ranked EPFL, Martin Vetterli, told The Local that the institution’s international character is “crucial” and something they have long considered very important to maintain quality.

“It is possible, even probable, that the attractiveness of the federal technology institutes and Swiss universities is higher today because of the American political context,” he added.

“That can be considered a positive in the short term from Switzerland’s point of view, but it certainly isn’t in the medium and long term, because science will not come out stronger.”

EPFL does not intend to take advantage of the US situation to step up recruitment, he said.

The ranking comes in a week when the president of the Association of American Universities expressed concern at the shift towards tighter immigration to the US.

“Other countries have set the goal of surpassing the United States as the global leader in higher education, research, and innovation.

“Allowing them to replace this country as the prime destination for the most talented students and researchers would cause irreparable damage, and help them to achieve their goal of global leadership.”

Earlier this week an Iranian researcher at EPFL was refused entry to the US after President Donald Trump imposed a temporary immigration ban on citizens from seven countries including Iran.

Dr Samira Asgari had been due to take up a post at a lab in Boston alongside professors of Harvard Medical School.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.