Ranking Regimes and the Production of Knowledge in Academia: (Re)shaping Faculty Work?

Abstract

In this integrated review of literature, we address a powerful movement among interrelated organizations that we call the "ranking regime." We argue that the ostensive purpose of this regime is to identify "world class" universities, and thus to organize post-secondary education into a competitive transnational market. Although extant research has addressed how rankings are reshaping the field of higher education, there is little work that addresses the influence of rankings on the evaluation of faculty work and the production of knowledge. Thus, we review existing studies that have focused on the intersection of this ranking regime, faculty work, and faculty evaluation in order to assess the implications of the ranking regime for the production of knowledge within academia and for faculty evaluation. We argue that the ranking regime affects the production and evaluation of knowledge by promoting individualism, standardization, commodification, and homogenization. We offer policy and practice implications as well as directions for future research.

Ratings, rankings, research evaluation: how do Schools of Education behave strategically within stratified UK higher education?

“…Tensions between the academic field and the field of practice (Biesta 2011) have not only questioned the scientific legitimacy of the field but also the status of education as an academic discipline within the higher education system and universities themselves (Furlong 2013). Given the rise of "ranking regimes" (Gonzales and Núñez 2014) and "performative accountability" (Oancea 2008) in higher education, we here investigate how such developments affected the behavior of university subunits, focusing on 75 Schools of Education (SoE) in the UK. The UK is a particularly insightful case because it has, since the mid-1980s, developed an encompassing system of evaluation that has in turn generated much of the power of ratings and rankings (Marques et al 2017).…”

Faculty Members’ Scholarly Learning Across Institutional Types

“…Gonzales () points out that faculty members’ work is “increasingly understood for its fiscal or cultural resource generation; and that evaluation of faculty work is contingent on their ability and willingness to self‐survey or document” (para. 2) their work (see also Gonzales & Núñez, ). Similarly, decreasing governmental funding and the recession has resulted in reductions in tenure‐track faculty lines and increases in contingent faculty, thereby heightening the workloads of those on the tenure track (Boyer et al., ; Ehrenberg & Zhang, ).…”

Left Unsaid: The Role of Work Expectations and Psychological Contracts in Faculty Careers and Departure

“…When departments, colleges, and universities are striving for better rankings and prestige many "rules of the game" begin to shift. Faculty often find the expectations for tenure and promotion change, becoming more narrow (e.g., requiring faculty publish in only top 3 journals) and requiring more research, grant funding, and international awards (Gonzales & Nunez, 2014;O'Meara & Bloomgarden, 2011). If this shift occurs while faculty are on the tenure track or trying to advance to full professor, they can become disillusioned, as the expectations for their performance are not what they expected when they accepted the position.…”

“…If this shift occurs while faculty are on the tenure track or trying to advance to full professor, they can become disillusioned, as the expectations for their performance are not what they expected when they accepted the position. Faculty then have to decide whether to accommodate the new expectations and work toward them, ignore them, or leave (Gonzales & Nunez, 2014).…”