The relevance of studying the theory and practice of building the reputation of higher educational institutions is of an enduring nature due to the fixed cyclical nature of their work process and the high degree of specificity of the results obtained. In the second and third decades of the twenty-first century, the rethinking and development of…

The research aims to identify the themes that leading universities worldwide focus on when constructing their image. The authors selected 50 international universities, leaders in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE) for the year 2023, for the research. The research was carried out using content analysis. The material for…

This study examines the links between inclusive leadership and school attractiveness through the mediating effect of work engagement. Data was gathered from 487 teachers in 10 provinces across Turkey in 2023. The findings contribute by expanding the study of leadership in non-western countries by revealing the impact of principals' leadership on…

Although universities are often characterised as 'elite', institutions can attain status in multiple dimensions--reputation, research, money and selectivity. We studied 21st century public universities in the United States, using latent profile analysis to identify which universities followed each path to status. Most universities pursued none,…

Universities are increasingly perceived as strategic organizational actors that position themselves in the competition for reputation, resources, and talent. This study asks whether such positioning within the organizational field can explain variance in university governance structures. We quantitatively explore and explain the distribution of…

This study focuses on the role of visual resources in constructing the brand identity of Chinese universities. By drawing on the theoretical concept of corporate visual identity (CVI), this study analyzed universities' logos and typography of names from the social semiotic approach. Nine elite Chinese universities were selected as the corpus to…

Initiatives to build research universities to have world-class universities, the creator and the disseminator of scientific knowledge in knowledge-based economies, are among the most important policy reactions in higher education systems. With an increase in demands on greater accountability, transparency, and efficiency, studies investigating the…

University rankings have gained prominence in tandem with the global race towards excellence and as part of the growing expectation of rational, scientific evaluation of performance across a range of institutional sectors and human activity. While their omnipresence is acknowledged, empirically we know less about whether and how rankings matter in…

Higher education in general and state-funded institutions especially will need to assess what an undergraduate education means in a changed geo-political socio-economic environment. For business schools, employability and future careers are stated outcomes to define a quality business education. Recent empirical scholarship has indicated…

This study analyzes the factors influencing the stakeholder perspectives on of Higher Education Institution (HEI) rankings, reporting data collected from 1232 participants through a survey method and employing the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model and complementary models for the analyses. Our primary focus was to…

This research aims to comparatively examine the changing appearance of world rankings of Asian HEIs among their global competitors from 2015 to 2025. The study group consists of the top five HEIs indexed in the 2024 Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings from the nine countries with the largest population in Asia and the top five HEIs…

Universities face tough choices about how to allocate tight budgets. A frequent question is whether a significant investment in research that is crucial for the university's position in rankings will make the university more popular and lead to higher revenues from tuition. This paper analyses how the ranking and popularity of universities are…

Nowadays, university rankings are a familiar phenomenon in higher education all over the world. But how did rankings achieve this status? To address this question, we bring in a historical-sociological perspective and conceptualize rankings as a phenomenon in history. We focus on the United States and identify the emergence of a specific…

The paper introduces a novel approach to university rankings that considers a university's contribution to sustainable development. It addresses the usual controversies surrounding the construction of rankings using composite indicators. The conventional approach typically involves normalizing sub-indicators and applying subjective weights for…

Identity and branding in higher education institutions is one of the many attributes of a university that potential students look for when searching for a place to study. This phenomenological qualitative study used interviews of eleven current and past students at the University of the Great Lakes (UGL) to discover what attributes of the…