During the past years a huge number of university rankings were published. Besides several specified rankings, e.g., on the MBA market or on web page analysis, there are different national and international rankings which refer to whole colleges and/or fields, but rankings are still developed for the university sector and are published. On the one hand this leads to the situation that universities are contacted by different institutions which strains the university employees and rectorates and - due to underlying methodology - to different results. Nevertheless Rankings lead to transparency and disclosure of university achievements and study terms which is not only helpful for students, but allows also a comparison of universities.
Besides, often the discussion about university rankings is marked ideologically or also politically. The question to whom and for what university rankings are useful, actually is seldomly taken into account.
The Centre for Higher Education (CHE) in Germany tried to get first answers on these questions.