Beyond university rankings: Classifying national higher education systems through SIR performance concentration

Abstract

This study classifies National Higher Education Systems (HES) based on the concentration of institutional performance, utilizing data from 5,051 universities in the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR). The paper addresses the limitation of traditional rankings which, by focusing on elite institutions, fail to capture systemic health or the internal distribution of performance. To this end, it proposes and operationalizes the HES Index, a metric based on concentration analysis that compares the global standing of institutions with their relative national position. The results identify four country level performance distribution models (ranging from distributed excellence to concentration in lower tiers) and classify the systems into six clusters differentiated by size, concentration, and public/private composition. The analysis reveals a strong positive correlation between the HES Index and the Human Development Index (r = 0.685), suggesting that distributed excellence is linked to higher socioeconomic development. It also concludes that a strategic dilemma exists between concentrating resources to enhance international visibility and fostering cohesive systemic excellence. The HES Index is validated as a robust diagnostic tool for policymakers to assess the morphology and competitiveness of their systems beyond institutional averages.