Criticality in world-class universities research: a critical discourse analysis of international education publications

Abstract

This study aims to critically and systematically investigate the contemporary discourse within scholarship on world-class universities in different higher education context. It applies critical discourse analysis to review articles from some top higher education academic journals and books published between 2000 and 2019. Exploring the notion of world-class university involves international-level identities and models, national-level policies and strategies, and institutional-level responses and practices. Findings highlight the absence of a clear definition of the concept of world-class university, an obvious Western-dominated value-laden paradigm, hegemony of global rankings discourse, priority of policies and strategies and inexplicit suggestions for practical application of research findings. Applying the critical discourse analysis, we examine the mission of higher education research towards global competitiveness and global rankings and the attitudes towards the challenges in pursuing world-class universities and its dissemination through the international academic publications as value neutral. This study focuses on recognizing, articulating, and critiquing biases in research production and dissemination. Different researchers might provide multiple critical scopes to investigate international inclusive scholarship on world-class universities. This study also contributes to the approaches in which discourse both shapes and is shaped by globalization and internationalization trends in the higher education contexts, and future orientations in this study.

Keywords:

• World-class universities
• higher education research
• China’s higher education
• critical discourse analysis
• critical paradigm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funded by ‘2019 Annual Project of the 13th Five-Year Plan for Education Science of Beijing (Key Project)’ Research on Internationalization Development Strategy and Evaluation Index System of Capital Universities for Creating ‘Double First-Class’ (ID: AAAA19009).

Notes on contributors

Jian Li

Jian Li, Assistant professor, China Institute of Education Policy, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University.

Xue Eryong

Xue Eryong, Professor, China Institute of Education Policy, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University.