University Rankings, Global Models, and Emerging Hegemony

Global network centrality of university rankings

Universities and higher education institutions form an integral part of the national infrastructure and prestige. As academic research benefits increasingly from international exchange and cooperation, many universities have increased investment in improving and enabling their global connectivity. Yet, the relationship of university performance and its global physical connectedness has not been...

8 Global University Rankings in the Polish Context

University rankings are a topic of controversy and contention in many countries. Poland is no exception. This chapter analyzes aspects of rankings in the Polish context. Poland is a particularly interesting case, since it is a middle-sized coun­ try with a middle-tier higher education system. Among the questions discussed here are: What is the impact of global university rankings on the Polish ...

A different approach to university rankings

Educationalists are well able to find fault with rankings on numerous grounds and may reject them outright. However, given that they are here to stay, we could also try to improve them wherever possible. All currently published university rankings combine various measures to produce an overall score using an additive approach. The individual measures are first normalized to make the figures ‘co...

On the function of university rankings

The Quest for Hegemony Among Countries and Global Pollution

This paper builds on the assumption that countries behave in such a way as to improve, via their economic strength, the probability that they will attain the hegemonic position on the world stage. The quest for hegemony is modeled as a game, with countries being differentiated initially only by some endowment which yields a pollution free flow of income. A country’s level of pollution is assume...