Emoscapes and commercial university rankers: the role of affect in global higher education policy

ABSTRACT

A concerted attempt to offer an affect (emotions, desires, moods, and/or attitudes) lens underlying the global university rankings (GURs) phenomenon remains absent. Using two commercial ranker case studies (Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS)), this article provides a critical policy analysis illuminating how rankers use emoscapes (affective landscapes) in globalizing HE policy. Based on an analysis of publicly available rankers’ texts, it demonstrates how such rankers construct, exploit, and mobilize emoscapes framing policy problems and offering solutions, thus establishing and maintaining their global HE authority. It reveals two ways this happens. First, by capitalizing on a global precarity emoscape, rankers mobilize policy through affective representational infrastructures to sell policy ideas and tools aimed at enhancing institutions’ global prestige defined by their own ranking measures. Second, rankers mobilize a trust emoscape by sponsoring and co-ordinating HE gatherings (another form of affective infrastructure), thus shaping the ‘public moods’ and binding people’s desires for best practices, student mobility, and/or student recruitment. It concludes that emoscapes are vital to these rankers’ activities in framing policy and selling their policy solutions, and requires more attention in future critical policy research.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• emoscapes
• university rankings
• policy mobility
• Times Higher Education
• Quacquarelli Symonds

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Rino Adhikary, Adam Grimm and Jelena Brankovic, and the two CSE anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Riyad A. Shahjahan

Riyad A. Shahjahan is an associate professor of Higher, Adult and Life Long Education (HALE) at Michigan State University. His areas of research interests are in globalisation of higher education policy, temporality and embodiment in higher education, cultural studies and de/anti/postcolonial theory.

Erin L. Sonneveldt

Erin L. Sonneveldt is a doctoral student of Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education (HALE) in the College of Education at Michigan State University. Her research interests are in global higher education, diverse learning environments, faculty work and language ideology.

Annabelle L. Estera

Annabelle L. Estera is a doctoral candidate in HALE at Michigan State University. Her research interests include decolonization and discourses of diversity and multiculturalism in higher education.

Sohyeon Bae

Sohyeon Bae is a doctorate student in HALE at Michigan State University. Her research interests include study abroad experiences, global university rankings, and their influences on higher education contexts, focusing on Asian countries.