This volume offers a detailed examination of world rankings of institutions of higher education: the process of creating the rankings and the groups that do so, rankings’ impact on a country’s standing in the educational realm, and activities undertaken by numerous institutions worldwide to enhance their standing. Some of the 22 chapters are quite technical, dissecting the process of creating the various ranking systems and proposing new statistical or analytical approaches for evaluating institutions of higher education, given the potential bias of some of the current tools.
– Mark Schumacher, American Reference Books Annual (ARBA)
University administrators and faculty in education and other disciplines explore global university ranking systems, how they contribute to the notion of a world university market, and their influence on the strategic direction of many universities and the future of higher education. In sections on historical development and methodological issues, university ranking strategic issues, and regional and national initiatives, they discuss such topics as whether academic life was perfect before rankings, analyzing the disciplinary focus of universities: whether rankings can be one-size-fits-all, the development and outcomes of a new institutional ranking system for public administration research and scholarship, institutional legacy as a context of the implementation of international rankings in the Russian higher education system, and the King Abdulaziz University path to excellence: mapping between accreditation and ranking systems.
– Protoview Reviews