World Class Universities, Rankings and the Global Space of International Students

Abstract

The notion of World Class University suggests that this category of universities operates at a global and not national level. The rankings that have made this notion recognised are global in their scope, ranking universities on a worldwide scale and feed an audience from north to south, east to west. The very idea of ranking universities on such a scale, it is argued here, must be understood in relation to the increasing internationalisation and marketisation of higher education and the creation of a global market for higher education. More precisely, this contribution links the rankings of world class universities to the global space of international student flows. This space has three distinctive poles, a Pacific pole (with the US as the main country of destination and Asian countries as the most important suppliers of students), a Central European one (European countries of origin and destination) and a French/Iberian one (France and Spain as countries of destination with former colonies in Latin America and Africa as countries of origin). The three poles correspond to three different logics of recruitment: a market logic, a proximity logic and a colonial logic. It is argued that the Pacific/Market pole is the dominating pole in the space due to the high concentration of resources of different sorts, including economic, political, educational, scientific and not least, linguistic assets. This dominance is further enhanced by the international ranking. US universities dominate these to a degree that World Class Universities has become synonymous with the American research university. However, the competition has sharpened. And national actors such as China and India are investing heavily to challenge the American dominance. Also France and Germany, who are the dominant players at the dominated poles in the space, have launched initiative to ameliorate their position. In addition, we also witness a growing critique of the global rankings. One of the stakes is the value of national systems of higher education and the very definition of higher education.

World-class universities: past and future

“…The rankings identify and classify the quality of the main outputs of higher education. The rankings compare universities internationally and are arranged hierarchically such as the top 100, the top 200 or the top 1,000 (Salmi and Liu, 2011;B€ orjesson and Lillo Cea, 2020). In this study, given the central topic under discussion, university ranking is the primary theme.…”

“…Higher education across the world is currently significantly restructuring its competitiveness and positioning in the global context (B€ orjesson and Lillo Cea, 2020;Rashid and Mustafa, 2021). Accordingly, academic achievements are more visible at the global level in terms of global academic ranking standards (Pavlyutkin and Yudkevich, 2016).…”

Defining standards for rankings: An investigation of global university rankings according to the Berlin Principles

“…In contrast, the second problem is more ontological in that it has addressed a scepticism about the Berlin Principles being of “[…] any real value to either assess, compare or improve ranking practices in any fundamental way ” (Hägg & Wedlin, 2013, p. 340).

Scholars holding this latter stance also contend that the Berlin Principles paradoxically have been disengaged from ranking practices, which suggests that the document itself and the social context of its production are regarded more as a source of legitimacy for the institutionalisation of rankings rather than as a technical tool. (Barron, 2017, as cited in Börjesson & Cea, 2020, p. 145)

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“…Scholars holding this latter stance also contend that the Berlin Principles paradoxically have been disengaged from ranking practices, which suggests that the document itself and the social context of its production are regarded more as a source of legitimacy for the institutionalisation of rankings rather than as a technical tool. (Barron, 2017, as cited in Börjesson & Cea, 2020, p. 145)…”

International Student Revenue and International Rankings Success: A Case Study of Australian University Research Strategies

“…The publication of global university rankings beginning in the first two decades of the twenty-first century has reinforced this latter trend toward the concentration of scholarship (Munch 2014:28-31). Indeed, there seems to be a positive feedback connecting the internationalization of universities' academic faculties and the global concentration of scholarship success, with both researcher mobility being closely related to rankings success (Borjesson and Lillo Cea 2020;Downing et al 2021: 105-106). The managerial imperative to place high on the international rankings drives universities to seek the most productive researchers wherever they can find them, and this faculty internationalization itself contributes directly to some of the international ranking scores.…”