Rankings de universidades: calidad global y contextos locales

University rankings have become a staple in the fields of higher education policy and institutional development strategy. Their impact is echoed in the media around the world. The number and diversity of rankings, global, national and specialized, in the United States, Europe and Asia have increased in the past few years, developing into a quality scale that created a body of regulations of sorts that Latin American higher education policies and institutions have to consider. This paper is a conceptual approach to the most widely used rankings, undertaking a critical examination of the implicit quality model and the theoretical and methodological criteria that guide them. Specifically, it discusses the existing tension between global approaches and local contexts.