ABSTRACT
After more than a decade of increasing internationalisation and ma rketisation of higher education (Lynch 2006; Teichler 2004), university rankings have captured the attention of university managers, employers, policymakers, academics and the wider public (Hazelkorn 2011; Sadlak and Liu 2007). Admittedly, university rankings play an interesting role in the competition for quality and prestige as, by design, they are a signal of quality intended for the use of prospective students, parents, industries and academics when selecting their university of choice. Accordingly, governments in many countries have introduced reforms or implemented changes in the governance of their higher education systems in response to real or assumed challenges of rankings. Hence, priority has been given to factors related to concentration of research funding; creation of critical mass; increasing competition among higher education institutions within the country; providing more autonomy to institutions enabling them to have better and more flexible responses to external challenges, while at the same time increasing accountability in terms of effectiveness and efficiency in fulfilling targets and performance goals.
