What is Comparative Research

This chapter explores the impact of global university rankings on the development and implementation of institutional and national policies and practices in the two countries forming the European Higher Education Area. More precisely, it focuses on Slovenia and the Netherlands which are rarely in the focus of comparative higher education research. Initially, it discusses the landscape of eight selected global rankings in terms of key indicators they use and criticisms to which they are subjected. Afterwards, it investigates global (and national) rankings in the framework of institutional and national policies, strategies, and practices of each country case. In the continuation, it places the obtained results into the comparative perspective and concludes by highlighting that university rankings frequently support vertical diversity within and between (Slovenian and Dutch) higher education systems and, as such, disregard the complexity of particular disciplinary, institutional and national contexts.