Academic rankings in higher education: trends of international scientific literature

Abstract

This article presents the state of the question about global academic rankings implications in higher education. Among thousands of studies located in international scientific bases, 23 scientific papers were selected as corpus of analysis. Implications were organized into three groups: internationalization and competition; governance and autonomy; and, quality and productivity. The scientific literature presents universities, worldwide, looking for better positions in the academic rankings, eventually supported by national governments, aiming to join the select circuit of World Class Universities. Noteworthy encouraging the internationalization of higher education institutions, especially in Asian countries, by increasing the publication of scientific articles and, often, by the partnerships to import models consolidated from the universities that are in the top of the rankings.