ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the continuing influence of rankings on higher education, drawing on international experience to assess the extent to which rankings are driving institutional strategies. Affordability is a big factor. International competitiveness has been accelerating at the same time governments are confronting different dimensions of demographic change, massification of higher education, changes to the labor market, and escalating costs. With the exception of the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER), Thomson Reuters, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Times Higher Education, are all developing substantial initiatives to monetize higher education data. Quality and excellence have become key differentiators in the national and global market as the battle between winners and losers intensifies, conferring gatekeeper status on elite educational institutions and their nations. As a consequence, rankings can encourage perverse behavior through an overemphasis on a small set of indicators, in much the same way that a flashlight only casts a narrow band of light.
