International rankings and the contest for university hegemony

Abstract

In just a decade, the international university rankings have become dominant measures of institutional performance for policy-makers worldwide. Bolstered by the façade of scientific neutrality, these classification systems have reinforced the hegemonic model of higher education – that of the elite, Anglo-Saxon research university – on a global scale. The process is a manifestation of what Bourdieu and Wacquant have termed US “cultural imperialism.” However, the rankings paradigm is facing growing criticism and resistance, particularly in regions such as Latin America, where the systems are seen as forcing institutions into a costly and high-stakes “academic arms race” at the expense of more pressing development priorities. That position, expressed at the recent UNESCO conferences in Buenos Aires, Paris, and Mexico City, shows the degree to which the rankings have become a fundamental element in the contest for cultural hegemony, waged through the prism of higher education.

Keywords:

• higher education
• rankings
• cultural hegemony
• U.S. cultural imperialism
• Latin America

Notes

1. Defining elements of the elite, US research institution include: a strong focus on knowledge production (emphasis on research and graduate studies); highly competitive admissions, seen as a proxy for excellence; among the highest tuition fees in the world, even in the case of public institutions; strong ties to business and the knowledge economy; heavy emphasis on productivity and efficiency in evaluating faculty; and financial autonomy through financial diversification.

2. We ascribe to Harvey´s definition of neoliberalism, as a philosophy that ‘holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market’ (2005, 3).

3. Obama announced his proposal for a College Scorecard system in August 2013, amid growing concern over soaring tuition rates at US institutions. The proposed system, which has faced stiff resistance from many of the institutions themselves, would grade colleges on measures such as the average tuition they charge, the share of low-income students they enroll, and the amount of student-loan debt incurred by graduates. Under the model, students attending highly rated institutions could qualify for larger federal loans or lower interest rates. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/college-score-card.

4. The most well established of these is the International Ranking Expert Group (IREG), which was founded in 2004 by the UNESCO European Centre for Higher Education (UNESCO-CEPES) in Bucharest and the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, DC. Its members include producers of the main rankings, as well as rankings experts and analysts. The group operates the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence: http://www.ireg-observatory.org/.

5. IREG members met in Berlin in May 2006 to develop a ‘set of principles of quality and good practice in HEI rankings.’ The resulting guidelines, known as the Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions, seek to establish best practices in university rankings on a national, regional and international level. They include recommendations in four areas: the purposes and goals of rankings; the design and weighting of indicators; data collection and processing; and the presentation of ranking results.

6. The 1918 Cry of Córdoba, named for the student movement at the University of Córdoba, in Argentina, gave root to a tradition of university autonomy in the region, as well as a strong emphasis on the role of universities in promoting social change.

7. The contest over the hegemonic model of higher education is also being played out in the student protest movements in Chile, Colombia, Great Britain, and Quebec, as well as in the protests against the skyrocketing levels of student-loan debt in the United States and Chile, to name a few examples. In most of those cases, the students and their allies are demanding a return to free, public higher education and the recognition of higher education as a public good.

8. Examples include recent opinion pieces by conservative columnist Andrés Oppenheimer in The Miami Herald and Andrés Bernasconi, a higher education professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, in Inside Higher Ed.

9. For a more detailed overview of the rankings’ methodologies, see the Swiss education ministry’s website on the international rankings: http://www.universityrankings.ch/

10. See: http://www.iesalc.UNESCO.org.ve/dmdocuments/posicion_alc_ante_rankings_en.pdf

11. The definitions were ratified in the UNESCO-sponsored World Conference on Higher Education, in 1998 and 2008. (IESALC 2011).

12. The event was convened by José Narro Robles, the rector of the UNAM, Rubén Hallú, rector of the University of Buenos Aires, Víctor Pérez Vera, rector of the University of Chile, and Moisés Wasserman, rector of the National University of Colombia. Full information about this Latin American meeting is available at http://www.encuentro-rankings.unam.mx/.

13. The English version of the Final Declaration is available online at: http://www.encuentro-rankings.unam.mx/Documentos/Final-declaration-english.pdf.