Academic stars and university rankings in higher education: impacts on policy and practice

Stack, Michelle

doi:10.1080/23322969.2019.1667859

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…However, as the demographics of trainees have become more diverse, those who are not Caucasian men are lacking role models. Institutionalized racism and sexism (22), defined as policies, societal norms, and ideologies that reinforce inequities, have played a large role in access to, inclusion in, and hiring policies at U.S. universities (23,24). Accordingly, faculty from marginalized groups are eliminated from the applicant pool and subsequent hires, leaving university policies and practices to be predominantly created by Caucasian men.…”

Section: Suggestions For Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflementioning

confidence: 99%

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Hagan

Pollet

Libertucci

2020

J Microbiol Biol Educ.

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Within the field of biomedical research in the United States, the proportion of underrepresented minorities at the Full Professor level has remained consistently low, even though trainee demographics are becoming more diverse. Underrepresented groups face a complex set of barriers to achieving faculty status, including imposter syndrome, increased performance expectations, and patterns of exclusion. Institutionalized racism and sexism have contributed to these barriers and perpetuated policy that excludes underrepresented minorities. These barriers can contribute to decreased feelings of belonging, which may result in decreased retention of underrepresented minorities. Though some universities have altered their hiring practices to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in the applicant pool, these changes have not been sufficient. Here we argue that departmental invited seminar series can be used to provide trainees with scientific role models and increase their sense of belonging while institutions work towards more inclusive policy. In this study, we investigated the demographics (gender and race) of invited seminar speakers over 5 years to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan. We also investigated current trainee demographics and compared them to invited speaker demographics to gauge if our trainees were being provided with representation of themselves. We found that invited speaker demographics were skewed towards Caucasian men, and our trainee demographics were not being represented. From these findings, we proposed policy change within the department to address how speakers are being invited with the goal of increasing speaker diversity to better reflect trainee diversity. To facilitate this process, we developed a set of suggestions and a web-based resource that allows scientists, committees, and moderators to identify members of underserved groups. These resources can be easily adapted by other fields or subfields to promote inclusion and diversity at seminar series, conferences, and colloquia.

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Section: Suggestions For Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflementioning

confidence: 99%

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Hagan

Pollet

Libertucci

2020

J Microbiol Biol Educ.

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“…This calculated factor influences the journal's academic importance or rank. 6 Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis and social network analysis, I analysed the websites of top-ranked institutions in Canada, the USA, South Africa, the UK, India and China (see Stack 2016Stack , 2019Stack , 2021. 7 The Koch brothers own Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company in the United States.…”

Section: Incompatible Goals: Equity and Rankingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 6 Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis and social network analysis, I analysed the websites of top-ranked institutions in Canada, the USA, South Africa, the UK, India and China (see Stack 2016 , 2019 , 2021 ). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic: University rankings or co-operatives as a strategy for developing an equitable and resilient post-secondary education sector?

Stack

2021

Int Rev Educ

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University leaders, governments, industries and donors use university rankings to assess the success or failure of higher education institutions; however, these rankings tell us nothing about how universities are challenging or amplifying oppression in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article first examines the implications of the incompatible aims of universities: performing well based on rankings while espousing commitments to equity and anti-oppressive practices. Second, this article proposes cooperatives as a strategy for developing a more equitable and resilient post-secondary education sector. The assumption underpinning this proposal is that without structural changes to higher education, COVID-19 will amplify an already inequitable distribution of resources and lessen the ability of universities to play a responsible role in expanding public debate and increasing understanding of critical issues facing the planet. Cooperatives could be an effective way for the sector to engage with the need to radically alter how we interact with each other and the natural world, both now and beyond the pandemic.

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“…The rankings that currently dominate our higher education and research landscapes do not even attempt to measure qualities that we identify as important to open knowledge institutions. They tend to drive behaviour that reduces diversity (Stack 2020), can limit collaboration, and coerce institutions into protecting power, preventing access, and excluding those who might share in success.…”

Section: Open Knowledge and International Rankingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The commercially owned bibliometric databases that dominate international rankings focus on a narrow range of research outputs, provide poor coverage of research published in languages other than English, and limited coverage of the humanities and social sciences (Aksnes & Sivertsen 2019). In spite of their limitations, rankings have had profound consequences for the ways in which universities are funded, their status and ability to attract students, as well as for the ways in which resource allocation, promotion and tenure decisions are made (Stack 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Puts the ‘Open’ in Open Knowledge?

Montgomery

Neylon

Wilson

et al. 2020

Cultural Science Journal

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This paper explores the concept of ‘open’ knowledge – and the growing importance of digital literacies in supporting a transformation of universities into open knowledge institutions. In order to operate as successful open knowledge institutions, universities must do more than support the transmission of research outcomes from experts located within the university to external communities. They must engage in knowledge-making with communities. This involves questions of equity, diversity and inclusion – who gets to make knowledge; as well the role of productive interactions across boundaries (disciplines/university/wider community) in its growth and spread. There is a genuine desire among many universities, research funders, and researchers themselves, to address the challenges of diversity, equity and impact implicit in the open knowledge agenda. However, open knowledge aspirations are being stymied by comparative rankings that are built on data that excludes the work of entire disciplines, continents and languages; and are not capable of capturing important aspects of the value universities create. Many of the stakeholders using these rankings to inform decision-making are unaware of the prejudices and blind spots that current measurement tools create and perpetuate. They are also unaware that it is possible to interact critically with the tools used to measure and narrate performance; to demand that new questions are asked of the digital traces that universities and research communities create; and build better tools for understanding the role of universities in processes of knowledge-making and sharing. As this paper discusses, the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative, a major research project funded by Curtin University, is a deliberate effort to support the new forms of digital literacy needed to enable this shift.

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Academic stars and university rankings in higher education: impacts on policy and practice

Cited by 18 publications

References 24 publications

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic: University rankings or co-operatives as a strategy for developing an equitable and resilient post-secondary education sector?

Who Puts the ‘Open’ in Open Knowledge?

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