With the expansion of higher education, its differentiation had also commenced affecting not only individual study plans but also the role and structure of the universities. (Clark 1996) The reputational, program and structural types of institutional diversity appear both in between and inside the institutions. (Hrubos 2012) After the financing crisis of the higher education institutions, orientation had gained a greater role, and rankings, which were aimed to make the differences among institutions measurable, had started to proliferate. These higher educational rankings that had been created with the purpose of orientation to describe the diversity have a homogenizing effect on the institutional profiles. It is because the examination with unified criteria incites the institutions to develop and emphasize the features which are in the focus of the ranking dimensions (monkey policy). (Noorda 2011) According to former studies the hierarchical rankings rank the higher education institutions mainly according to the aspects which are in the focus of attention of the academic elite. (Sadlak Cai 2007) According to the statement of the European University Association inner homogeneity is a more suitable environment for elite education, and heterogeneity better serves the purposes of mass education (Creativity, 2009) For the complex roles of the higher educational system great institutional diversity is needed, both in case of the institutions’ inner structure and in their profile. Mapping, which is the classification system that measures horizontal diversity, was created to serve the latter principle, and it focusses on the institutions’ full range of activities, unlike the vertical approach. These two approaches are interconnected, because the horizontal classification also makes vertical comparisons possible among similar institutions. (Hrubos 2012) The methodology of horizontal classification is developed by The European Mapping Project (U-map). The final research report published in 2010 includes the detailed online classification methodology (Vught et al. 2010), but its adaptation in the European Union is impeded by the lack of unified comparable data.

At the same time the U-map model can be applied well in each country if the local characteristics of the data is taken into account. (Rauhvargers 2011) Based on the European experiences the U-map model was also applied in Hungary. The resulting 8 clusters have made it possible to distinguish the institutions based on their profile, and therefore to analyse them in a relevant comparison context. However the Hungarian public discourse and the ranking practice is still pervaded by the vertical approach that focusses on the gradual differences and ignores nominal institutional diversity. During our investigation we try to find out how hierarchical ranking describes the institution clusters based on the mapping characteristics, or, in other terms, whether there are any institution types that have typically low or high performance in terms of hierarchical ranking.

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