This paper reviews the recently introduced National Higher Education ranking system in Indonesia in order to evaluate its potential as a sustainable model to improve the quality of higher education in the country. It is a scaffold towards an established world-universities ranking system that may prove formidable for a developing country. This ranking system is based on four quality criteria, namely quality of academics, of management, of research and of students, each with its own weighting factor and scale. It is found that the actions and inactions of institutions "vis á vis" their continuous quality improvement may reflect their ranks. In countries where the thirst for higher education is high such as in developing countries, institutions' ranks play a decisive competitive role. A rational, transparent, "bona fide" and dependable national ranking system is realistic in helping to improve the quality of higher education in the country.