Global Academic Rankings. A challenge or a chance to Portuguese Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

In the era of the globalization and internationalization of higher education, there has been an international trend for global university rankings.World university rankings, which reflect the global competition of universities and depict their relative statuses, have attracted the attention ofmany universities. Global rankings considered to be one of the mechanisms—and not the only one and far to be perfect—for evaluating higher education, even if they are a crucial tool for comparing and measuring the accomplishments of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) by specific metrics. The Times Higher Education—World University (THE-WU) and Times Higher Education— Impact Ranking (THE-IR) methodologies and the rankings were analyzed, as well as the Portuguese Higher Education Institutions under the framework of these both rankings. As a major result, it is possible to see that there are advantages for HEIs to be part of a ranking such as THE-WU or THE-IR if they want to promote themselves. Admission in a ranking will be both a challenge and a chance for the promotion of HEIs, which should always be considered while bearing in mind the limitations they present (e.g., lack of justification of the weightings of the 4 SDGs and the possible double counting of a publication in SDG 17 and another selected SDG, both in THE-IR