Summary             The international rankings in the present form only cover a very small percentage of the world's 17000 universities.           Most international rankings focus predominantly on indicators related to the research function of the universities.           The importance of links to external stakeholders and environment are largely ignored. Rankings have certainly helped to faster greater accountability and increased pressure to improve management practices. There is a danger that the time invested by universities in collecting and using data to improve their performance in the rankings may detract from efforts to progress in other areas, such as teaching and learning or community. The importance of this lecture is to inform universities about the methodologies behind the most popular global rankings and about their potential impact.          Various ways of rankings can be grouped according to their purpose, parameters measured, the representation of the results or intended impact: