You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query>
    <pages>
      <page ns="14" title="Category:Lists of universities and colleges" missing="" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" />
      <page pageid="38966" ns="14" title="Category:List of Cities in The Valerian Empire" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2007-03-24T04:09:23Z" lastrevid="270941" counter="600" length="51" new="" />
      <page pageid="47090" ns="14" title="Category:List of NS Passports" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2007-10-28T00:26:29Z" lastrevid="332717" counter="487" length="135" />
      <page pageid="43060" ns="14" title="Category:List of PEEL Office-Holders" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2007-07-09T02:51:25Z" lastrevid="303553" counter="409" length="17" new="" />
      <page pageid="37822" ns="14" title="Category:List of resorts in Stammte Berge" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2007-02-25T14:12:35Z" lastrevid="261200" counter="413" length="38" new="" />
      <page pageid="16885" ns="14" title="Category:Listeneisse" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2005-11-13T04:14:26Z" lastrevid="105733" counter="605" length="22" new="" />
      <page pageid="33595" ns="14" title="Category:Lists of countries" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2006-11-12T19:19:02Z" lastrevid="227480" counter="829" length="20" new="" />
    </pages>
  </query>
</api>