It is not only Higher Education that is obsessed with rankings; they are seemingly everywhere, perhaps given the media-friendly hooks they provide.
An interesting recent example with relevance to the university sector is, the Bloomberg Innovation Index, which claims to identify the 50 top ranked countries in areas including research and development spending and concentration of high-tech public companies.
South Korea and Sweden top the list, but of major note is that the USA has fallen out of the top ten. This was attributed in part to the “education-efficiency” category, which includes the share of new science and engineering graduates in the labour force.
Given concerns about higher education policy in the US, it will be an interesting one to watch.