We have therefore chosen to adopt a simple criterion, undeclared but verifiable: the number of alumni holding a post of chief executive officer or equivalent in one of the 500 leading international companies, at a particular time and with the data, (companies and company leaders) of the Fortune Global 500 classification established by Fortune magazine in 2010 on the basis of turnover published by international companies.
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This criterion is meant to be the equivalent, as far as companies are concerned, of the criterion of "alumni having been awarded the Nobel Prize or the Fields Medal", used in the classification established by Jiaotong University in Shanghai, the former students concerned being of a similar number. However, unlike the Shanghai classification, this criterion points to the performance of the training courses provided by higher education institutions rather than performance achieved in research by those institutions.
