What do the holy grail and university rankings have in common? The very possession of them does not produce unbounded wealth. Departing from this metaphor, Andreas Schleicher engages in a fundamental critique of university rankings. As he points out, rankings are always defined through a process of bringing together political, methodological and ethical considerations. In doing so, they are highly sensitive to the variables they are measuring. And since there is no such thing as an agreement on comparable properties of universities and programmes offered, it is essential to discuss thoroughly what to assess, whom to assess and which units to survey and to analyse. According to Schleicher, there are two possibilities: either international organisations such as the OECD do rankings well, or the media will continue to do them poorly. Since information feeding and peer pressure seem to have become more powerful than legislation and regulation, Schleicher pleads for the first option.