Methodology of international university rankings: analysis and criticism

The article contains a review of papers which analyse and criticise the methodology of the main world university rankings presented in the English-language literature. It is preceded by a brief description of structure of the three largest rankings: ARWU, QS, THE. The main directions of criticism are: specifics of the set of rating system indicators; problems of using the main types of indicators: the bibliometric ones and the peer review ones; problems of weighting indicators and their aggregation into one index. A number of researchers conclude that the opportunities of using the results of university rankings are quite limited.