A new global university ranking, set up with €2 million in funding from the European Union, was launched yesterday. U-Multirank, which assesses the performance of more than 850 higher education institutions worldwide, breaks new ground by producing multi-dimensional listings rating universities on a much wider range of factors than existing international rankings. 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. Individual users will be able to build a personalised ranking based on their particular needs. This will allow them to obtain information on the universities or specific disciplines which most interest them and to choose criteria according to their own preferences.