The Law of Increasing the Steepness of the University’s Ascent to the Top of Excellence

In the article, based on summarising the data of the Shanghai rating for 2004-2022, other ratings, the law of increasing steepness of the university's ascent to the top of excellence is formulated. The law determines that the university's approach to the state of highest perfection is accompanied by an increase in the rating steepness (as the difference in scores of neighbouring places) of the upward trajectory. In particular, the average rating steepness for the first ten places of the institutional version of the 2022 Shanghai rating is almost 1000 times higher than this characteristic for the last 100 positions (901-1000) of the rating distribution. The law applies both to institutions as a whole and to individual academic subjects. Empirical and theoretical justifications of the law are provided. The law has a statistical and probabilistic nature, it makes it possible to theoretically predict and practically design the behaviour of both the population and individual universities in their advancement to leadership. Among the consequences of the law is the need for a progressive, exponentially growing concentration of resources (human, organisational, informational, infrastructural, and financial) to generate the university's capacity to achieve the highest mission-appropriate levels of complexity of educational, research, and innovative activities. The law expands the framework of the university science (university studies), is important for the development of a strategy for the development of leading universities of the highest excellence (strategy-2), the implementation of the second dimension of the Bologna process and the European Higher Education Area (competitiveness and attractiveness), is relevant for the post-war recovery of Ukraine from the consequences of the war on an innovative, highly intelligent and high-tech basis.