In the world of business and higher education, reputation is a precious asset. As pressure increases from global competition and stakeholder scrutiny, your organisations must continue to find a compelling way to validate your excellence.
From global league tables, to prestigious teaching awards and international accreditations, your institution has more opportunities than ever to earn external validation. What separates world-class schools from the rest is not just earning recognition, it’s how effectively they communicate it.
For communications teams and key senior leaders within your organisation, academic awards, rankings and accreditations are far more than vanity metrics. They are strategic comms assets that helps your organisation to articulate who you are, what you stand for, and how you compare in the global landscape.
Awards, rankings, and accreditations are external endorsements. They provide an extra level of credibility that your brand messaging alone often cannot. A prospective student hears “this is independently vetted” rather than “this is what we say about ourselves.”
Announcement cycles are natural PR windows. They can give you news hooks, angles, and opportunities for feature stories you may not get elsewhere throughout the year. For example, the Financial Times does Special Reports throughout the year that are linked to Business Education rankings, if you include this in your calendar you can prepare content and story ideas ahead of time.
Awards and rankings highlight the strengths of your institution, some schools have excellent gender balance, others are top in sustainability and innovation. Use these accolades in your PR strategy to provide your own positioning within a very competitive market. Everyone says that they are the best, but by utilising your successes you are showing everyone that you really are the best.
It may be tempting to treat a good rankings result or an award as a one-day celebration, but it could be an essential part of your PR plan. When institutions weave recognitions consistently into their messaging, branding, and media relations they accumulate reputation equity. Over time, these signals reinforce a perception of ongoing excellence, not an isolated achievement.
Think of it as a building block, every new recognition builds on the credibility established last year, strengthening your institutional narrative year after year.
For deans and senior leaders at your institution, the question shouldn’t be “should we talk about rankings and awards?” but rather “how do we talk about them in a strategic and authentic way?” The real value comes from what happens after the announcement and how you weave it into the broader narrative.
Don’t treat awards and rankings as surprises that appear on your calendar once a year, build them into your PR strategy. Find the key dates, and create plans of what to do if results are outstanding and identify the narratives that will resonate with international audiences when the results are released.
Here at BlueSky Education, we’ve worked hard to have great relationships with key media, and often have journalists reach out to us ahead of rankings being released to curate their stories. Being prepared allows you to provide journalists with a good story angle and all the information they need efficiently.
Numbers are always fantastic, and when distributing a press release or reaching out to journalists I will always advise including a statistic in the headline if you can. That being said, it is important to pair every announcement you have about rankings and awards with real stories behind the numbers. For instance, you can talk about a successful alumnus from the course, a researcher’s impact, or interview the award winners.
Use this as an opportunity to explain the story behind the success.
Many accreditations and rankings are also linked to media publications, for example AMBA, EFMD, and AACSB, just to name a few. In some cases, these publications may only include in their articles schools that are accredited by them or feature in their rankings.
Academic awards, rankings, and accreditations are far more than reputation ornaments, they’re active drivers of institutional trust, visibility, and differentiation. Used intelligently, they help universities craft compelling narratives, deepen stakeholder engagement, and reinforce long-term credibility in an increasingly competitive global education landscape.
If your institution is ready to take a more strategic approach to communicating awards, rankings, and accreditations, get in touch with BlueSky Education to talk about how we can help.
Katie is a Senior Account Manager at BlueSky Education.
She is an education communications specialist with journalistic flair thanks to a degree in Multimedia Journalism and a stint as a reporter at the Financial Times.