Among various battles between the most developed countries for different kinds of dominations in the world in the last years, the battle for occupation of prestige positions on worldwide ranking lists of the first-class universities occupies very important place. In the last six years, different kinds of ranking system of universities have been established all over the world, while the battle for creating the most prestige list is continuing and improving every day. EU engagement for creating its own list is one of the proofs how much ranking of knowledge and creating these kinds of lists are important.

Aiming to advance values system in university education, the European Union is developing a new ranking system of European universities to improve education and economic development in Europe.

Europe`s around 4,000 higher education institutions have over 19 million students and 1.5 million staff, so European universities want to take important place in the current world university rankings, while US universities take prestige.

In the beginning of this year, a German/ Dutch/ Belgian/ French Consortium for Higher Education and Research Performance Assessment, called CHERPA, won an EU call for tender to develop and test an alternative design for a global ranking of universities.

So called system of European league table will be tested on 150 high education institutions around the world and it would be initially focused on engineering and business studies of management. The project of European ranking will be improved during two years, and it will have a budget of 1.1 million euros.

The aim of European league table is improving of educations across Europe what would contribute to wider economic development strategy of the Union.

In the global market, universities have become "a barometer of global competition measuring the knowledge-producing and talent-catching capacity of higher education institutions," points out Ellen Hazelkorn from the Dublin Institute of Technology. 

"Knowledge has become the foundation of economic, social and political power, where the `scramble for students` or `battle for brainpower knowledge complements traditional geo-political struggles for natural resources," she adds, according to EUObserver.

According to Marosh Tevcovich, EU Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, multidimensional Europe`s project for ranking will create better balance between examination indicators and educational indicators. Although the number of ranking tables increase every year, there are two main rivals - two main world university rankings - in the UK (THES - Times Higher Education Supplement) and in China (SJTU - Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities). Both rankings, British and Chinese, once per year reported worldwide ranking lists of universities, and generally show that US universities are well ahead European ones.

Besides, entrance in prestige ranging lists of high education institutions isn`t just intent for high developed countries but even for transitional countries and countries in the region. According to new ranking list of 6.000 universities through the world, done by Webometrics which is organisation specialised for evaluation of "visibilities" and influences of universities on Internet, Belgrade University is on the 299th position, and that`s a great progress on the list because it was at the 426th place two years ago.

Webometrics Ranking of World Universities accurates this lists two times a year and now it includes more than 18.000 educational institutions in the world. The first ranking has done 2004, thanks to the help of the four biggest search engines in the world.

"This is Spanish list and our final aim is an entrance to these two, which are done by English and Chinese. For those lists we are invisible in this moment. So, we created team to change this situation. Our friends from Slovenia help us, because University in Ljubljana is ranked on the Chinese list, and on Webometrics` it took better place than we did," commented professor Dr. Branko Kovacevic, Belgrade University Chancellor.

He explained that Belgrade University hadn`t good presentation about scientific works, examinations, scientific publications, and that the most of people didn`t know that the biggest Serbian University have ten Institutes.

"Unfortunately, we are not exist on Chinese and British list, but our intent is to change that during this year," added Chancellor and remained on the fact that Croatian Universities were worse ranked than Serbian ones. From former Yugoslavian areas, Ljubljana University is on 201st position (in the past 283rd) is the best ranking for many years; the Maribor University is on 667th position (in the past, 708th). Croatian Universities are evidently behind, the University in Zadar - 1254th, the Zagreb University is on 1440th, and the Split University is on 3737th position. From universities in the region, the excellent one is the Budapest University on 273rd position and National Technological Institute from Athens, which is on 323rd position.

On that list, the first position has the Technological Institute from Massachusetts, following the Harvard, the Stanford and the Berkley and that order is unchangeable for years. Absolute domination of US universities on the top 100 list is "disturbed" by the Cambridge on 22nd, the University in Tokyo on 24th position and the Taiwan University on 26th position. Oxford is on 42nd position, and the Bologna University - on 72nf place on the list of the most influential universities on the world net.

Criteria for modelling lists are: number, perimeter, popularity, influence of web-sites and all web content of high education institutes, including monographs, reports, press-conferences, seminars, digital library and general information about universities, their students, masters, researchers and all staff.

In the globalised world, these lists help universities to promote themselves and students to easily choose where they would like to study, but also they are used by the politicians as a measure of national economical development.