For many institutions, to ignore your university’s ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship, or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact. Conceptually unique in its scope, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge addresses the lack of empirical research behind university and journal ranking systems. Chapters from internationally recognized scholars in decolonial studies provide readers with robust frameworks to understand the intersections of coloniality and Indigeneity and how they play out in higher education. Contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts explore the political economy of rankings within the contexts of the Global North and South, and examine alternatives to media-driven rankings. This book allows readers to consider the intersections of power and knowledge within the wider contexts of politics, culture, and the economy, to explore how assumptions about gender, social class, sexuality, and race underpin the meanings attached to rankings, and to imagine a future that confronts and challenges cognitive, environmental, and social injustice.

"For many institutions, to ignore your university's ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding and talent. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge this book exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact. Conceptually unique in its scope, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge addresses the lack of empirical research behind university and journal ranking products systems. Chapters from internationally recognized scholars in decolonial studies provide readers with robust frameworks to understand the intersections of coloniality and Indigeneity and how they play out in higher education. Including contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts, this book explores the political economy of rankings within the contexts of the Global North and South, as well as examines alternatives to media-driven rankings. This book allows readers to consider the intersections of power and knowledge within the wider contexts of politics, culture, and the economy, to explore how assumptions about different factors such as gender, social class, sexuality, and race, underpin the meanings attached to rankings, and to imagine a future that confronts and challenges cognitive, environmental, and social injustice."--

Analysing rankings in diverse higher education settings, this book draws on discourse analysis, theory, ethnography, and case studies, to consider the question of how knowledge is produced and shared.

Delivering quality education to students while remaining competitive at an international level is only one of the many challenges universities face today. To attain their goals, universities must adopt new strategies to achieve academic excellence. World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the implementation of a ranking system for higher education institutions, providing a thorough overview of the impacts of these rankings on educational quality. Exploring the benefits and challenges of this system in a global context, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, students, administrators, and policy makers interested in the effects of university rankings in the education sector and beyond.

Global rankings and the Geopolitics of Higher Education is an examination of the impact and influence that university rankings have had on higher education, policy and public opinion in recent years. Bringing together some of the most informed authorities on this very complex issue, this edited collection of specially commissioned chapters examines the changes affecting higher education and the implications for society and the economy. Split into four interrelated sections, this book covers: The development of rankings in higher education, how they have impacted upon both the production of knowledge and its geography, and their influence in shaping policymaking. Overviews of the significance of rankings for higher education systems in Europe, Asia, Africa, Russia, South America, India and North America. An analysis of rankings in relation to key concerns that pervade contemporary higher education. Examination of the role rankings are likely to play in the future directions for higher education. This is a significant scholarly work that analyses in depth an important development in higher education systems, and which is likely to have an important influence upon how we understand the higher education policy-making process – past, present and future. It provides new analysis and conceptual understanding for researchers, and firm evidence for policy makers to use when addressing the value of rankings in measuring the quality of their institutions. Besides bringing together a powerful cast of academics, this book incorporates contributions from heads of important international higher education organisations – from both those involved in making and also in administering key decisions. This timely, reflective and accessible book forms crucial reading for those studying the subject of rankings, as well as the broader implications and unintended consequences of rankings on national higher education policies. Extending beyond academic researchers and students, this book will also be of significant interest to policymakers, higher education leaders and key stakeholders.

Higher Education Institutions simultaneously critique and participate in national and international rankings of universities. However, this creates a difficult situation since if universities do participate in rankings they acquiesce to a system based in media logics that has little to do with academic norms of research. If they do not participate in the rankings they risk losing public funding, students and donors in an increasingly competitive and globalized environment. This book delves into the influence of journalists, business tycoons and multinational corporations in defining what world class is and how it will be measured. Rankings provide us with a rich study for understanding how universities define, deploy and manage their assets and liabilities in a mediatized globalized economy.

Global University Rankings explores the novel topic of global university rankings and their effects on higher education in Europe. The contributions in this volume outline different discourses on global university rankings and explore the related changes concerning European higher education policies, disciplinary traditions and higher education institutions. The first global university rankings were published less than a decade ago, but these policy instruments have become highly influential in shaping the approaches and institutional realities of higher education. The rankings have portrayed European academic institutions in a varying light. There is intense reflexivity over the figures, leading to ideational changes and institutional adaptation that take surprisingly similar forms in different European countries. The contributions in this book critically assess global university rankings as a policy discourse that would seem to be instrumental to higher education reform throughout Europe.

Universities have been propelled into the center of the global political economy of knowledge production by a number of factors: mass education, academic capitalism, the globalization of knowledge, the democratization of communication in the era of the Internet, and the emergence of the knowledge and innovation economy. The latest book in the International Studies in Higher Education series, Universities and the Public Sphere addresses the vital role of research universities as global public spheres, sites where public interaction, conversation and deliberation take place, where the nature of the State and private interests can be openly debated and contested. At a time of increased privatization, open markets, and government involvement in higher education, the book also addresses the challenges facing the university in its role as a global public sphere. In this volume, international contributors challenge prevalent views of the global marketplace to create a deeper understanding of higher education's role in knowledge creation and nation building. In nearly every national context the pressures of globalization, neo-liberal economic restructuring, and new managerial imperatives challenge traditional norms of autonomy, academic freedom, access and affordability. The authors in Universities and the Public Sphere argue that universities are uniquely suited to have transformative democratic potential as global public spheres.

This book examines the quality assessment movement in academic scholarship, as globalization prompts a search for global measures of university services and output. It gauges productivity in terms of universal publication metrics, and considers ranking and research productivity from a comparative perspective. The book considers the use of the “impact factor” as a gauge of publication value, noting that this less important in countries lacking central government appropriations to universities and to research. It argues that pressure to publish in certain journals, and to research topics of interest to English language readers, has been felt differentially in English-language systems, compared to others, but also that performance pressures fall more on younger, more juniour, contract staff, than on senior and tenured professors. It problematizes international comparisons of quality, and analyses the benefits of a zone of ideas and metrics in a common language – promoting international mobility, efficiency, collaboration - but also the costs which are rarely borne equally across countries, languages and cultures. The book provides a strong, evidence-based contribution to major debates in contemporary higher education reforms and the measurement of academic output.

This edited volume introduces readers to the relationship between higher education and transnational politics. It shows how higher education is a significant arena for regional and international transformation as well as domestic political struggle replete with unequal power relations. This volume shows: The causes and impacts of recent transformations in higher education within a transnational context; Emerging similarities in objectives, institutional set-ups, and approaches taking place within higher education institutions across different world regions; The asymmetrical relations between various kinds of institutional, commercial and state actors across borders; The extent to which historical and colonial legacies are important in the transformation of higher education; The potential effects these developments have on the current structure of international political order. Drawing on case studies from across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, the contributors develop diverse perspectives explaining the impact of transnational politics on higher education—and higher education on transitional politics—across time and locality. This book is among the first multi-disciplinary effort to wrestle with the question of how we can understand the political role of higher education, and the political force universities exert in the realm of international relations.