University ranking as social exclusion

Abstract

In this article we explore the dual role of global university rankings in the creation of a new, knowledge-identified, transnational capitalist class and in facilitating new forms of social exclusion. We examine how and why the practice of ranking universities has become widely defined by national and international organisations as an important instrument of political and economic policy. We consider the development of university rankings into a global business combining social research, marketing and public relations, as a tangible policy tool that narrowly redefines the social purposes of higher education itself. Finally, it looks at how the influence of rankings on national funding for teaching and research constrains wider public debate about the meaning of ‘good' and meaningful education in the United Kingdom and other national contexts, particularly by shifting the debate away from democratic publics upward into the elite networked institutions of global capital. We conclude by arguing that, rather than regarding world university rankings as a means to establish criteria of educational value, the practice may be understood as an exclusionary one that furthers the alignment of higher education with neoliberal rationalities at both national and global levels.

Keywords:

• exclusion
• higher education
• knowledge society
• neoliberalism
• transnational capitalist class
• university rankings

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2010 Conference of the British Association of International and Comparative Education; thanks to Yann Lebeau for his useful comments there. Many thanks also to Gargi Bhattacharyya, Ajmal Hussein, Henry Miller, Peter Quaife, Karen West, Audrius Zujus for their suggestions, and particularly to Anneliese Dodds for her thoughtful criticism of the paper. The authors are finally grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and recommendations.

Notes

1. This regime also includes techniques of audit, target cultures, and professional and market discipline. See Olssen and Peters (2005), Strathern (2000) and Salmi (2009b) on the ‘growing accountability agenda’ in the ‘knowledge economy’; UNESCO.’s (1998) ‘World Declaration on Higher Education for the 21^st Century’; Peters (2004) on globalisation, education and knowledge economy; Callinicos (2006) on universities in a neoliberal world; and Wedlin (2008).

2. The figure of 1–2% is based on the approximation that there are 200 top positions that ‘count’ in the world rankings, and the International Association of Universities (2011) lists over 15,000 officially recognised universities in the world at present.

3. There are many other rankings of universities at the national level, and a number of large commercial companies competing to produce different ‘world university rankings’. For further discussion, see Usher and Savino’s comparison of 19 systems (2006, 2), Dill and Soo (2005), Hazelkorn (2009) and Van Dyke’s 10-system comparison from 2005 (cited in Marginson and van der Welde 2007, 319).

4. In a recent draft paper on immigration policy reform, the Dutch government suggested that anyone graduating from any of the top 150 universities in the Times Higher Education and Jiao Tong Shanghai ranking tables would automatically be eligible for a one-year job search visa in the Netherlands as part of a new ‘highly skilled migrants’ programme (Netherlands Government 2008, 40; Beerkens’ Blog 2008).

5. See Eurozine (2010); http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/.

6. See http://www.ireg-observatory.org/.

7. See International Ranking Expert Group (2006).

8. See http://www.che-ranking.de for details, reports and updates.

9. These definitions are drawn from the American Heritage (2000) and Harper Collins (2003) dictionaries, available online at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/admit.

10. This mirrors recent populist ‘explanations’ for the state bailouts of banks following the financial crisis of 2008; namely, ‘that (true, authentic) capitalism and the free market economy are a popular, working-class affair, while state intervention is an upper-class elite strategy designed to exploit hard-working ordinary folks’ (Zizek 2009, 15). It is also commensurate with the ‘entire ideologico-historical narrative [that] is constructed in which socialism appears as conservative, hierarchical, and administrative’ (2009, 55).