El ranking Times en el mercado del prestigio universitario

Abstract

El presente artículo analiza el World University Ranking del Times Higher Education (THE), una de las clasificaciones internacionales de universidades más conocidas e influyentes. Se pone especial atención en el diseño y construcción metodológica del ranking. A partir de un estudio longitudinal se examina la distribución regional y por afinidad lingüística, así como la movilidad institucional y la variabilidad de las primeras 200 universidades en cada una de sus ediciones (2004 a 2009). En este contexto se estudia en particular el comportamiento de las universidades iberoamericanas. Con base en las reflexiones anteriores se ubica al ranking THE como un ranking con fines comerciales, condición que explica buena parte de sus atributos, características y resultados, así como sus limitaciones y confiabilidad.

Principales rankings académicos internacionales: el caso de Chile

“…A pesar de las críticas más distintivas hacia los RACs (HAZELKORN, 2014;ORDORIKA, RODRÍGUEZ GÓMEZ, 2010;REYES, 2016), la literatura académica-científica reconoce que esos instrumentos de evaluación externa, internacionales y nacionales, vinieron para quedarse (MARGINSON, 2014) e instalarse dentro de la batalla por la excelencia (HAZELKORN, 2011), instalándose como un mecanismo en continuo perfeccionamiento (CALDERON, 2019a,b), dentro de una sociedad performativa (BALL, 2010).…”

Competing on the world stage: the Universidade de Sa?o Paulo and global universities rankings

“…This means that rather than being a progress report as such, it is possible for an institution to improve its performance in some aspect of the ranking, but still suffer a loss of points because the top institution progressed at a faster rate. This gives the impression of a zero-sum competition rather than the idealistic view of the ready and free exchange of information described to which we ought to subscribe (ORDORIKA;LLOYD, 2013).…”

“…Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the entire project, alongside 'internationalisation' is chimerical (HALLIDAY, 1999), a delusional project with little meaning outside of the increasing efforts made by universities to market themselves to attract endowments and more high paying students. This means that in the 'race for reputation' (HAZELKORN, 2013;ORDORIKA, 2010), those who are 'World Class' are those who come top of the rankings, both in bibliometric impact factors and in reputational surveys.…”

“…This means that today, journal impact factor (JIF) and citation rates are just one among many measures of research impact. Their use as the only one suggests that many rankings prefer to measure what is convenient to measure rather than what is actually informative (Ordorika;.…”

“…In this way we see that the relationship between the economy and knowledge are much more complex than might be commonly supposed rather than being one and the same thing, as is often supposed by neo-liberal theorists, and a good proportion of NPK theorists (BARTUNEK, 2011), who lack the ability to differentiate in the context of application between commercial and social contexts, instead seeing them as bundled. Instead, the relationship between economy and knowledge economy is mediated by society; by ideology, politics and most crucially status (HAZELKORN, 2013;MARGINSON, 2009;ORDORIKA, 2010).…”