Educational Rankings Annual is useful for students, parents and school faculty. Also administrators of libraries and educational institutions use rankings to defend budgets, justify new positions, obtain government funding and attract philanthropic support. The annually updated resource presents more than 4,000 national, regional and international lists and rankings compiled from hundreds of respected sources. The entries in Rankings include a description of the ranking, background information on criteria for establishing the hierarchy, additional remarks about the ranking, the complete or partial (if extensive) ranking and source citations if necessary.

This up-to-date resource presents more than 4,000 national, regional, local and international lists and rankings compiled from hundreds of respected sources. Entries typically include a description of the ranking; background information on criteria for establishing the hierarchy; additional remarks about the ranking; the complete or partial (if extensive) ranking; and a complete source citation for locating additional information if necessary.

Educational Rankings Annual is useful for students, parents and school faculty. Also administrators of libraries and educational institutions use rankings to defend budgets, justify new positions, obtain government funding and attract philanthropic support. The annually updated resource presents more than 4,000 national, regional and international lists and rankings compiled from hundreds of respected sources. The entries in Rankings include a description of the ranking, background information on criteria for establishing the hierarchy, additional remarks about the ranking, the complete or partial (if extensive) ranking and source citations if necessary.

This ground-breaking and exhaustive analysis of university ranking surveys scrutinizes their theoretical bases, methodological issues, societal impact, and policy implications, providing readers with a deep understanding of these controversial comparators. The authors propose that university rankings are misused by policymakers and institutional leaders alike. They assert that these interested parties overlook the highly problematic internal logic of ranking methodologies even as they obsess over the surveys’ assessment of their status. The result is that institutions suffer from short-termism, realigning their resources to maximize their relative rankings. While rankings are widely used in policy and academic discussions, this is the first book to explore the theoretical and methodological issues of ranking itself. It is a welcome contribution to an often highly charged debate. Far from showing how to manipulate the system, this collection of work by key researchers aims to enlighten interested parties.

Examines how higher education has contributed to widening inequalities and might contribute to change. By exploring questions of access, finance and pedagogy, it considers global higher education as a space for understanding the promises and pressures associated with competing demands for economic growth, equity, sustainability and democracy.

During the last decades ranking has become one of the most controversial issues in higher education and research. It is widely recognized now that, although some of the current rankings can be severely criticized, they seem to be here to stay. In addition, rankings appear to have a great impact on decision-makers at all levels of higher education and research systems worldwide, including in universities. Rankings reflect a growing international competition among universities for talent and resources; at the same time they reinforce competition by their very results. Yet major concerns remain as to the rankings' methodological underpinnings and to their various impacts. This new book presents a comprehensive overview of the current ‘state of the art’ of ranking in higher education and research, and introduces a completely new approach called ‘multidimensional ranking’. In part 1 rankings are discussed in the broader context of quality assurance and transparency in higher education and research. In addition the many current ranking methodologies are analyzed and critized, and their impacts are explored. In part 2 a new approach to ranking is introduced, based on the basic idea that higher education and research institutions have different profiles and missions and that the performances of these institutions should reflect these differences. This multidimensional approach is operationalized in a new multidimensional and user-driven ranking tool, called U-Multirank. U-Multirank is the outcome of a pilot project, sponsored by the European Commission, in which the new ranking instrument was designed and tested at a global scale.

Delivering quality education to students while remaining competitive at an international level is only one of the many challenges universities face today. To attain their goals, universities must adopt new strategies to achieve academic excellence. World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the implementation of a ranking system for higher education institutions, providing a thorough overview of the impacts of these rankings on educational quality. Exploring the benefits and challenges of this system in a global context, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, students, administrators, and policy makers interested in the effects of university rankings in the education sector and beyond.