The article examines the global university reputation race, launched in 2003. Between 2003 and 2010, there appeared a cluster of publications on the qualitative comparative analysis of their methodologies, and since 2010, a cluster of publications on the quantitative comparative analysis of university rankings has started to form. The review made…

This study investigates the evolving landscape of green universities by analyzing and comparing rankings from 2018 to 2022. It expands beyond the single score offered by the UI GreenMetric, employing Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques to evaluate universities from diverse perspectives. Focusing on the top 50 universities from 2022,…

University rankings have become an increasingly important aspect of academia in recent years. These rankings, which evaluate universities based on a variety of factors such as research output, graduation rates, and reputation, provide valuable information for students, educators, and policymakers alike.

While serving as a benchmark of 'world-class' universities, the global university rankings do not include the vast majority of universities. However, "Times Higher Education" developed a Japanese national university ranking table in 2017, which includes approximately 40% of all Japanese universities. This increased coverage of…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have long embraced a path towards sustainability and engaged in supporting sustainable development. The adoption of the sustainability development goals has forced HEIs to assess how they engage with these goals and how they address societal challenges head on. However, the emergence of sustainability rankings…

As key players in innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) assume a position as catalysts in creating and disseminating knowledge with repercussions in the societal, economic, political and innovation environments. In this scenario, HEI are facing the need to balance the performance of their traditional…

The aim of this article is to survey and interrogate the university sector of the world ranked by international rankings critically as to the sector's pursuit of the sustainable development goals. Universities have a unique and indispensable role to play in the pursuit of the lofty objective of the sustainable development goals. However, when…

University rankings have a growing impact on how people view the academic excellence of higher education. The complicated relationship between rankings and academic excellence is explored in this essay along with how it may affect higher education policy and practice. The importance of rankings and their influence on institutional decision-making…

Over the past few decades, university rankings have become an increasingly important factor in the higher education sector. Universities are ranked based on various criteria such as research output, teaching quality, and graduate employability. However, there is a growing movement to incorporate sustainability and social impact into the ranking…

University rankings have become commonplace in higher education. Traditional quantified rankings do not merely measure educational performance: they equally grant status, enforce competition between institutions, and are emblematic for the ongoing capitalization of higher education. Drawing on the field of Science and Technology Studies, this…

University rankings have gradually become an issue for concern in the academic community worldwide. Several mechanisms with different methodologies have been developed to rank the universities appropriately. However, some ranking tools have notable issues, especially with the indicators adopted. Some are based merely on research performance,…

This paper focuses on the effect of merger on university efficiency. In a first stage analysis, efficiency scores of English universities are derived for a 17-year period using the frontier estimation method data envelopment analysis. A second stage analysis explores the effect of merger and other factors on efficiency. We find that mean…

We investigate the main question of whether higher education institutions are able to increase their performance due to mergers, takeovers, or organizational restructuring. The problem of measuring performance when there are several "output" and "input" indicators can currently be solved by recourse to a proven data analysis…

Global university rankings seek to illustrate the performance of institutions on an international level and are used by many institutions to help them to reach strategic goals, as such, they have become synonymous to some as an indicator of quality and desirability. As global university rankings become further embedded as a basis on which…

Since universities' commitment to internationalisation has been increasing, instruments for measuring institutional internationalisation performance are urgently needed to monitor and evaluate the progress made about internationalisation. Although efforts have been made to develop various tools, an internationally applicable instrument for…