Abstract:

Higher education institutions’ rankings have become a significant part of modern higher education market and the impact of rankings on universities globally continues to grow. In response to popularity and wide use of higher education institutions’ rankings in various areas, from student recruitment to governmental level policies, universities are forced to recognize the importance of rankings and are expected to achieve and maintain high positions as the sign of institutional success and excellence. This suggests that universities are likely to institutionalize rankings in their goal setting and strategic planning.

The aim of the study is to explore the use of higher education institutions’ rankings in strategic planning documents of universities across the world and to identify the levels of rankings’ institutionalization in university strategic plans. The study is based on the content analysis of current strategic planning documents of 100 universities included in the top 500 by QS World University Rankings.

The results showed that 60 per cent of universities institutionalize rankings in their strategic planning documents. Furthermore, 5 levels of institutionalization of rankings were identified, ranging from the use of rankings to overview current state of university in local and global higher education market to setting particular positions as key performance indicators. The results did not reveal differences between the levels of institutionalization of rankings among universities of different age, status and institutional focus, however, the relationship between the level of institutionalization of rankings and university size was identified.

Keywords:

Higher education, universities, higher education institutions, university rankings, strategic planning, university strategy.