Acknowledgements -- Matching Visibility and Performance: A Standing Challenge for World-Class Universities -- Section I: Global Reflection -- Excellence Strategies and the Creation of World-Class Universities -- Towards World-Class Systems: World-Class Universities in High Participation Systems of Higher Education -- World-Class Universities in an Age of Slow Growth -- The Role of Universities in Society: Challenges Ahead -- Section II: National Reactions -- Transformation of University Governance through Internationalization: Challenges for Top Universities and Government Policies in Japan -- China’s Higher Education in Global Perspective: Leader or Follower in the ‘World-Class’ Movement? -- Research Universities for National Rejuvenation and Global Influence: China’s Search for a Balanced Model -- Section III: Institutional Responses -- Trading between Visibility and Performance at Global and Local Levels: The Example of Research Universities in France -- Global Visibility and Local Engagement: Can They Go Together? The Case of the National Research University Higher School of Economics -- A University for the Tropics -- Developing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Graduates -- Exploring the Linkage between Rankings and Strategic Planning -- The Role of Universities, the Rise of Rankings, and Internationalization -- About the Authors."The concept of world-class universities (WCU) has increasingly gained popularity in the past two decades around the world. WCU are regarded as cornerstone institutions of any academic system and imperative to develop a nation’s competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. The development of such universities is high on the policy agenda of various stakeholders worldwide, in both developed and developing countries and regions, and at both national and institutional levels, to promote their global competitiveness. Visibility and performance are among the most watched concepts in relation to develop WCUs, but remain complicated in nature and with no agreed upon definitions. Existing literature have focused on how to raise universities’ prestige, status, impact and rankings in the global and regional arena on the one hand, and how to enhance universities’ quality, efficiency, effectiveness and academic output on the other. However, whether visibility is a legitimate indicator of performance, or vice versa, is yet to be answered. Matching Visibility and Performance: A Standing Challenge for World-Class Universities provides insights of developing academic excellence from global, national and institutional perspectives, and intends to stimulate discussion on how universities can be ‘globally visible and locally engaged’ and how visibility and performance can be integrated and balanced in practice.".