University ranking: a new tool for the evaluation of higher education in Europe

After the personal publication impact factor and clinical quality assessment tools, university ranking would appear to be developing as yet another intrusive instrument in our academic and professional life. For decades now, based on an increasing worldwide desire for comparative information, ranking has progressively become a well-accepted practice in many fields of human activity: sports, personal wealth, banking, schools and hospitals. Since higher education (HE) has always been very international, and universities, which are becoming more global, have so many internal and external stakeholders, the application of ranking to university activities has become unavoidable: students need rankings to choose where to study, scientists to know where to work, governments, where to invest and university leaders, where they stand [1,2]. Following a preliminary conversation with our editor, the usefulness of the present review became evident when on 22 February 2007, a Google search on ‘university ranking’ provided 27 900 000 links devoted to the topic, while a simultaneous Pubmed search only identified 204 items published since 1968, devoted to topics as diverse as extra-pyramidal symptoms in neuroleptic patients, dento-maxillo-facial variability of cleido-cranial dysplasia or epidemiological aspects of Brucellosis in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, we found not a single article truly devoted to university ranking.