Rankings and Quality—A European Perspective

Abstract

Quality assessment has become one of the most prominent issues in discussions about higher education, both within the academic world and in higher education policy circles. While those issues have gained particular attention in recent years due to some structural changes in higher education, we have to keep in mind that higher education and science have always had an intrinsic relationship to quality and excellence (Brown 2004, x). The search for scientific knowledge and discovery in higher education is a striving for excellence, characterized by a long tradition of evaluation and peer review in various forms.