University Rankings in Critical Perspective

Pusser, Brian; Marginson, Simon

doi:10.1353/jhe.2013.0022

Cited by 173 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The interest in league tables that includes ranking universities, institutional research output, academics’ research output and academic publications occurs because ‘rankings are an easy hook on which to hang assessments of academic work’ (Young, Peetz, & Marais, , p. 78), at a time when ‘the internet is the primary university marketing tool’ (Tang, , p. 418). Pusser and Marginson () suggest that the number and use of tables has developed substantially over the last three decades, following the shift from Higher Education being limited to an elite few universities, to the mass system of Higher Education that exists today (Esson & Ertl, ). Hazelkorn () suggested that the growth of the Higher Education industry and simultaneous expansion of league tables have resulted in the gap between elite and mass‐market universities steadily increasing, and today this occurs when university growth is happening as institutions face funding cuts (Beattie & Thiele, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…League tables today measure nearly every aspect of undergraduate, graduate and academic performance at almost every university in the world, act as indicators of institutional power and prestige, and play a role in the allocation of resources (Pusser & Marginson, ). Amsler and Bolsmann () also suggested that rankings may be poorly understood because many interpret league tables as providing a neutral or objective method of looking at the quality and value of individual universities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Language games: University responses to ranking metrics

Heffernan

2017

Higher Education Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

League tables of universities that measure performance in various ways are now commonplace, with numerous bodies providing their own rankings of how institutions throughout the world are seen to be performing on a range of metrics. This paper uses Lyotard's notion of language games to theorise that universities are regaining some power over being placed on league tables by creating narratives that manipulate their rankings to promote their own strengths. This paper examines the findings of a study involving university responses to global rankings throughout 2016 produced by two major ranking bodies, Times Higher Education and QS Top Universities. The existing literature has established that ranking tables can be used as a vehicle for humiliation and can produce terrors for all those involved. Thus, the significance of this study's findings is in new ways of theorising university responses to appearing on league tables at a time when academia is a high‐stakes activity where institutions’ abilities are measured and reported on at a global scale.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language games: University responses to ranking metrics

Heffernan

2017

Higher Education Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The Academic Ranking of World Universities list (ARWU, ) has been the most cited ranking list, while the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE, ) and the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS, ) follow closely behind. Many questions about their relevance have been raised (Collyer, ; Hou, ; Huang, ; Jeremic, Bulajic, Martic, & Radojicic, ; Pusser & Marginson, ; Safon, ). Altbach (), for example, states that rankings are benchmarks of excellence for the public, and they help academic institutions demonstrate differences among them, which leads to differentiated goals and missions in academic systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new approach to the QS university ranking using the composite I‐distance indicator: Uncertainty and sensitivity analyses

Dobrota

Bulajić

Bornmann

et al. 2015

Asso for Info Science & Tech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Some major concerns of universities are to provide quality in higher education and enhance global competitiveness, thus ensuring a high global rank and an excellent performance evaluation. This article examines the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Ranking methodology, pointing to a drawback of using subjective, possibly biased, weightings to build a composite indicator (QS scores). We propose an alternative approach to creating QS scores, which is referred to as the composite I-distance indicator (CIDI) methodology. The main contribution is the proposal of a composite indicator weights correction based on the CIDI methodology. It leads to the improved stability and reduced uncertainty of the QS ranking system. The CIDI methodology is also applicable to other university rankings by proposing a specific statistical approach to creating a composite indicator.

show abstract

“…The Group of Eight institutions clearly sit at the top of the field, and, with the exception of the University of Tasmania, lead the Australian field in international rankings, systems of measurement and comparison that both constitute and reproduce an international field of higher education that exacerbates the global stratification of universities (Pusser & Marginson, 2013). These universities have higher cut-off scores for tertiary entrance and the lowest proportions of Indigenous students and students from low SES backgrounds (Gale & Parker, 2013 universities, and regional and more vocationally oriented universities, will tend to be more obviously driven by financial imperatives for enrolments.…”

Section: An Institutional Field Of Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite UQ's position as the elite, Group of Eight, university in Queensland, a position both constituted and reproduced in international rankings regimes (Pusser & Marginson, 2013), and Griffith's position as an aspirational University 18 whose raison d'être historically lay in acting for educating for social inclusion, both universities share similar discursive and practice based struggles to reconcile student equity goals and commitments to academic excellence and its concomitant reputational capital. In her case study of Griffith's student equity initiatives, Tranter (Sellar et al, 2010) noted that an internal review had been conducted in 2007 by a leading scholar in the equity field who, in addition to finding a wellexecuted and integrated set of equity strategies, found a tension between Griffith's equity mission and the concurrent strategy to recruit a greater number of school leavers with a high…”

Section: Griffith Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Practising equity: the activation and appropriation of student equity policy in Queensland higher education

Peacock¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

My thesis reports findings from an institutional ethnography of the outreach practices of universitybased student equity workers. The study explored the way these equity workers engaged with students, schools and communities from areas in the state of Queensland, Australia, that are categorised as being of low socioeconomic status (SES). The focus of the study is how the ruling relations (Smith, 2005) of current Australian student equity policy have been both activated and appropriated by staff, through their day-to-day use of texts, as they accomplished their outreach work. The practices of staff from two specific universities are explored -the University of Queensland (UQ), and Griffith University -as well as the related activities of a wider, state level body of student equity practitioners and managers called the Queensland Widening Participation Group (The Group).Since 2010, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) has been the Australian government's student equity program for funding universities to diversify their student populations to include people from low SES backgrounds. Financial incentives have operated to make these students more attractive to recruit and support, and to increase competition amongst universities to best provide outreach practices that 'raise aspirations' among school students in low SES areas. The problematic for the study was to account for tensions observed within student equity outreach practices as staff worked competitively to recruit disadvantaged students to their specific university, while collaborating with staff from other education institutions to expand opportunity for students more broadly and to develop their capacities for higher education more generally.From the standpoint of where student equity outreach staff were positioned within their universities, the study sought to map how the complex and diverse set of student equity outreach activities were being coordinated and standardised by the use of texts. These key texts-in-action that coordinated student equity work included the Memorandum of Understanding forged by The Group that set parameters for competitive and collaborative university outreach in schools; institutionally specific social inclusion targets; and, crucially, HEPPP reporting and evaluation templates that were set by the Australian government for universities to complete on a quarterly and annual basis. As student equity staff activated these institutional reporting technologies in their evaluation practices, they truncated their more complex and nuanced work into the deficit-based categories of HEPPP policy that sought to 'raise the aspirations' of 'low SES' students. This is how student equity outreach activity became 'recognizable' as mandated government policy.Yet my thesis claims that student equity also appropriated these ruling policy relations in various ways and depending upon their university's position within what I call institutional fields of action ii for student equity practice in Queensland. Usin...

show abstract

University Rankings in Critical Perspective

Cited by 173 publications

References 54 publications

Language games: University responses to ranking metrics

Language games: University responses to ranking metrics

A new approach to the QS university ranking using the composite I‐distance indicator: Uncertainty and sensitivity analyses

Practising equity: the activation and appropriation of student equity policy in Queensland higher education

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About