UNIVERSITY RANKINGS: CHALLENGES FOR UNIVERSITIES, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS AND COUNTRIES.

University rankings are becoming more and more important for student attraction, for financing attraction for research, for employment of respective university graduates. Several university ranking systems are popular in world and used for references by universities, employer's attitude for respective university graduates. Tasks for research: investigation of scientific publications on role of university rankings with special attention to role of research results and scientific achievements for university rankings; compare importance of research results and scientific achievements for university rankings in university ranking results in different ranking systems. The methods used in this study are scientific publication analysis, investigation of university ranking results with special attention to research organisation at the university. Within the framework of the reserch the role of the study of higher education institutions in the facilitating of their place in the international ratings is analysed. There are evaluated and compared the succsess of leading univesities of Baltic states in the more popular international ratings of higher education institutions - QS World University Rankings (QS), The Times Higher World University Ranking (THES), Academic Ranking of World Universities. Particular attention has been drawn to the assessment of the research activity of universities. There are concluded, that different methodologies are used in the international ratings of higher education institutions, however the evaluation of the reserh activity has significant proportion in all of them. Acquired findings indicate, that the results of research activity of universities have important role in the international ratings of higher education institutions and the improvement of these results facilitates the place of higher education institution in the ratings, thus fortifying, to which aspects of the strenghtening of reserch activity must be drawn special role and attention in the missions and strategies of higher education institutions. As well as important aspects are: innovative encouragement of academic staff for active scientific publication creation; support for academic staff for international communication, extensive information on research results; popularisation in mass media on research findings are very important aspects and often not seriously recognised aspects by several universities and higher education administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]