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

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the concepts of mediatisation and celebrification, this paper analyses how the Nobel Prize is used as a proxy of excellence by the ‘Big Three’ university rankers and top-ranked universities. Ranking advisories, university leadership at top-ranked institutions, and Nobel Prize adjudication committees are overwhelming from the same demographic: white men from the Global North. Who they deem ‘world class’ is overwhelmingly from the same demographic. Even though universities no longer have policies that keep out equity-seeking groups, the metrics used to determine world-classness re-entrench who is seen as a scholarly and administrative leader in higher education and what is considered world class knowledge.

Drawing on social network analysis and multimedia critical discourse analysis, this paper argues that Nobel adjudication committees, ranking advisories and the leadership of top-ranked institutions form an echo chamber that conflates academic excellence with being white, male, wealthy, and famous. The paper concludes with the urgent need to address the cognitive dissonance of universities promoting spurious media-based metrics while at the same time claiming a commitment to equity policies and practices.

KEYWORDS:

• University rankings
• league tables
• education industry
• Times Higher Education World University Rankings
• QS
• ARWU
• mediatisation
• celebritization
• Paolo Macchiarini
• Karolinska Institute

Acknowledgements

Thank you to André Mazawi for his invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Thank you also to Sameena Jamal and Jingwun Liang for their research assistance and Letitia Henville for her keen editing eyes. Finally, my thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Michelle Stack http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5569-1054

Notes

1 The Economic Prize was not bequeathed by Alfred Nobel and was created in 1968 in memory of him (73 years after the Nobel Prizes were created); however, it is often referred to as a Nobel and is awarded through the Nobel Foundation and adjudicated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

2 Note the 138 Nobel Prize winners used for this study had doctoral degrees and an affiliation with a university; however, not all were full-time faculty at a university (e.g. of the 8 women, 6 had primary affiliation with a university).