Abstract:

In modern higher education world university reputation becomes one of the strongest competitive advantages for universities seeking world-class status and global recognition. Moreover, university reputation lays a background for stakeholder intentions towards universities and involvement into university activities. As the importance of university reputation is emphasized, there is a need to analyze factors that influence university reputation in global higher education context.

A number of major global university rankings include indicators that measure reputational perceptions of university stakeholders as a part of overall ranking methodology. Thus, university rankings impose the perception of rankings as a measure of university reputation. However, recent trends in global higher education market reveal that rankings have become a continuous race to the top by ranking positions, and as a result, from a reflective concept they become an influencing factor in major university activity areas, that in turn, influence the reputation. In this article we aim to provide a view on global university rankings as a distinct phenomenon of higher education world that does not only reflect or measure university reputation, but also influences it through two important university activities: university performance improvement and university communication. In this article, a summarization of views on university reputation, the measurement of university reputation in major global university rankings and insights on the influence of rankings on university reputation are presented.

Keywords:

Higher education, university, reputation, rankings.