International rankings: Universities vs. higher education systems

International university rankings are an integral part of the higher education landscape. However, they focus only on a few hundred universities out of the more than 20,000 higher education institutions worldwide. Instead, system rankings attempt to account for the multiple dimensions of national higher education sectors. This study compares the respective methodologies and results of major university rankings with those of the U21 system ranking. It finds that, because the methodologies of the two types of rankings share some commonalities, their results also tend to converge. System rankings need to be more inclusive in terms of number and type of countries they cover, and to better reflect the diversity of missions fulfilled by national higher education systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.