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University rankings have become increasingly popular and have penetrated higher education globally. However, it is disputable whether rankings can contribute to the quality assurance of higher education institutions. The present study examined this issue by exploring the mechanism of rankings as an external force influencing university change. It investigated the case of the Chinese Disciplinary Ranking (CDR) and found that university behaviour changed to some extent in terms of resource allocation and internal policies. Priority was placed on areas that were more important for universities to obtain higher rankings. However, the contributions of those changes to quality assurance and improvement were not very evident at either the institutional or systemic levels. The analysis determined that the consequences of the CDR were the result of the interaction between higher education institutions and external ranking schemes. Rankings have inherent limitations as an external force in contributing to quality assurance in higher education.

This research analyzes the scheme proposed to assess the quality of higher education institutions in China, namely, the Quality Assessment of Undergraduate Education (QAUE) scheme. This article aims to determine the impact of the QAUE on universities and explore the reasons that intended effects have or have not been generated in the evaluated universities by conducting case studies of three Chinese universities with different statuses. The empirical studies show the effects on the various dimensions of quality provisions at different universities were not the same. It was found that the impact of the QAUE was not a linear consequence of policy implementation, but the result of an interaction between the external quality assessment scheme and the evaluated universities. Quality assessment is regarded to be an external force to cause universities to change. This empirical study of the QAUE shows that changes will only take place when the external force is integrated with the evaluated universities' internal motivation and capacity.