Game Rules

Goals

The goal of The Rankings Game is not simply to top the rankings. Instead, your aim is to accomplish your university’s strategic goals within the context of rankings-based competition.

Each player (or group) manages one university.

Each university is assigned five strategic goals tied to key performance indicators (KPIs). Success is measured by achieving these KPIs.

Between 3 and 10 universities can compete in a single game.

Moves

You can accomplish your objectives in several ways:

• Hiring Faculty: You can hire faculty from the open market, or from lower-ranked universities (at a 20% salary premium).
• Building Campus Infrastructure: Build new campus facilities at any time to increase capacity, research output, or other benefits.
• Manage Enrollments: Set limits on the number of students you will accept to maintain a good student:faculty ratio.

Rankings

Rankings aim to summarise institutional performance across:

• Research excellence
• Internationalisation
• Teaching quality (as proxied by student:faculty ratios)

Your ranking points are calculated each year as:

Ranking Points = Research Points + Internationalisation Points - Student:Faculty Ratio

Smaller class sizes are generally better, so student:faculty ratios are subtracted.

Rankings are recalculated at the start of each year based on the previous year’s data, influencing game conditions in the coming year.

Other important calculations

Campus Capacity: The sum of all capacity from your campus and facilities tiles (shown next to ). Used by adding the number of students (in thousands) plus faculty tiles.

Finance: Annual income comes from tuition ($10,000 per student) and research ($1M per research point). Expenses include faculty salaries (multiplied by 100 faculty), and campus operational costs.

Sequence

The game plays out over five years, concluding at the end of year five.

Random events, such as retirements or unexpected windfalls, will occur — plan ahead!

Gameplay Suggestions

Knowing your university’s strengths and weaknesses is key to achieving your goals. When playing as a team, consider assigning roles:

• Vice-Chancellor / President: Oversees overall performance in relation to strategic objectives.
• Dean of Students: Manages enrolments and monitors student-to-faculty ratio.
• Director of Finance: Tracks income and expenditure, tuition and research drivers.
• Provost: Oversees faculty hiring, research productivity, and internationalisation.
• Director of Operations: Manages campus capacity, space utilisation, and operational costs.

Have fun!

Whether you're engaging in deep analysis or just enjoying the game, remember to have fun and reflect on what drives decision-making in universities.