The international and national university rankings as an constituent of university`s competitiveness

The aim of the article. The aim of the article is to define the importance of participation in World or National universities rankings for higher university institutions as an effective tool in development and improvement of higher education system in total.The results of the analysis. Today the educational market actively interact universities (enterprises that provide educational services) and consumers (students who choose university and receive services). The main feature is the intangibility of educational services. Education is intangible and therefore difficult to assess its quality until purchased. Educational services require engineering experience of beneficiaries: university should make a clear image of what perception of reality and knowledge it wants to form for customer. It is important to develop together operational and contextual reinforcements of this impression. Educational services also feature inseparability of service provider. The process of providing educational services and consumption are almost always simultaneous.It should be mentioned that for a long time universities functioned as closed structures, the aim of which is fundamental and applied research and commercialization of their results. Nowadays new market realities show the necessity to provide new managerial forms of modern university. The top task of any university today is not only hiring students, but search for partners and providing of scientific research also. That is where international ratings help. International ratings become indicators of prestige. Relying on the rating results many decisions are made (i.e. decision on university to study, decision on scientific or business partnership). The most authoritative international university rankings are ARWU, QS World University Ranking and Times Higher Education. Ukrainian universities should focus on them in planning their foreign marketing policy.University rankings can be a competitive business not just for universities, but also for companies that explore and publish them. University rankings are a standard requirement in most countries with powerful higher education systems. But Ukrainian universities were involved in this phenomenon just a few years ago.Conclusions and directions of further researches. International and national rankings are not absolutely perfect. University of English speaking countries occupy leading positions and priority is given to universities that invest just in research. Universities-outsiders often blindly follow leaders, disrupting the natural development of university. It is difficult to say whether rankings may be indicators of educations quality, ratings are more complex, using more sophisticated techniques for ranking. From our point of view, they will become an effective tool for evaluating the quality of education and national education system in general, if it corrects the deficiencies.This theoretical study can be used as a basis for further research aimed at the development of methodological bases of university promotion programme, acceptance and implementation decisions in scientific and educational sphere.