University rankings have gained popularity around the world and are now a significant factor shaping reputation. This second edition updates Ellen Hazelkorn's first comprehensive study of rankings from a global perspective, drawing in new original research and extensive analysis. It is essential reading for policymakers, managers and scholars.

University rankings have gained popularity around the world, and are now a significant factor shaping reputation. This book is the first comprehensive study of rankings from a global perspective, making an important contribution to our understanding of the rankings phenomenon. This book has also been published in Japanese.

This book examines the quality assessment movement in academic scholarship, as globalization prompts a search for global measures of university services and output. It gauges productivity in terms of universal publication metrics, and considers ranking and research productivity from a comparative perspective. The book considers the use of the “impact factor” as a gauge of publication value, noting that this less important in countries lacking central government appropriations to universities and to research. It argues that pressure to publish in certain journals, and to research topics of interest to English language readers, has been felt differentially in English-language systems, compared to others, but also that performance pressures fall more on younger, more juniour, contract staff, than on senior and tenured professors. It problematizes international comparisons of quality, and analyses the benefits of a zone of ideas and metrics in a common language – promoting international mobility, efficiency, collaboration - but also the costs which are rarely borne equally across countries, languages and cultures. The book provides a strong, evidence-based contribution to major debates in contemporary higher education reforms and the measurement of academic output.

This book provides a cutting-edge analysis of the ways in which higher education institutions have become more international over the past two decades. Drawing upon a range of post-foundational spatial, network, and mobilities theories, the book shifts our thinking away from linear, binary, Western accounts of internationalization to understand the complex, multi-centered and contradictory ways in which internationalization processes have played out across a wide variety of higher education landscapes worldwide. The author explores transnational student, scholar, knowledge, program and provider mobilities; the production of mobile bodies, knowledges, and identities; the significance of place in internationalization; and the crucial role that global university rankings play in reshaping the spatial landscape of higher education.

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.

The growing impact of university rankings on public policy and on students choices has stirred controversy worldwide. This unique volume brings together the architects of university rankings and their critics to debate the uses and misuses of existing rankings. With voices from five continents, it provides a comprehensive overview of current thinking on the subject and sets out alternative approaches and complementary tools for a new era of transparent and informed use of higher education ranking tables.

Reveals how international competition for university students is impacting higher education and explains the benefits of this competition, which allows students to choose from diverse educational settings and programs.