Global university rankings have become central instruments for evaluating and comparing higher education institutions (HEIs). While widely used and presented as objective, these rankings are inherently reductive and linear, often failing to capture the contextual complexity, institutional diversity and locally situated significance of HEIs. Simultaneously, traditional contextual determinants used in comparative studies, such as history, geography, culture and more, often lack higher education specificity and fall short in accounting for institutional logics and missions. Moreover, there is a need to reconsider what is valued in higher education and who gets to define that value. This paper thus adopts an interpretive stance and proposes a multidimensional framework for analysing HEIs and systems. The framework integrates four complementary dimensions: (1) global rankings, critically reframed; (2) contextual determinants, expanded to highlight macro, meso and micro-systemic realities and education structures; (3) Sharon Stein’s social cartography, adapted to map institutional logics and philosophical orientations; and (4) ‘Kuverengegwa’, an African-informed principle that interrogates how institutions are credited and legitimised. Together, these dimensions support a more holistic, ethical and pluralistic approach to comparison – one that moves beyond metrics to include local relevance, societal needs and epistemic justice. Scholars can adopt this framework in whole or in part to guide more context-sensitive comparative inquiries.