The article analyses the development of global university rankings, of transnational policies of higher education and European strategies to cope with macro-level political and economical transformations in transnational higher education. In existing university rankings European universities – a building block of European nation-states – have not been able to compete with American universities. Although the general public has heard of only the dominant university rankings, a number of rankings measuring the ‘quality’ of higher education institutions (HEIs) have been developed in recent years. The European Commission has joined in on this activity, becoming the main defender of European universities. It aims to create an alternative, European ranking list of world universities in which the assets of European, publicly funded universities would be highlighted. Moreover, the OECD as the organisation of the most developed nations has also become involved in assessing HEI, stressing academic learning results. We will analyse the symbolic logic of ranking lists in higher education, their uses, and the European Commission’s and OECD’s initiatives to create alternative world university classifications.
