University rankings and the public(’s) governance of science
University rankings are proliferating. While we may claim that these lists are neither fair nor “true” representations of the global academic landscape they are nevertheless gaining increasing attention and they have become one of the core concerns for academic leaders and university managers across the world. Moreover, rankings are used by a wide variety of actors to navigate the academic fields: by students for selecting where to study, by corporations for selecting where to recruit, by policymakers for making comparisons and evaluate performances and, not least, by universities and higher education institutions to argue distinctiveness and prominence in the global scientific field. In part, following the development in one particular field – management education – rankings are becoming important elements in the contemporary governance of science.
Global expansion and proliferation of rankings
The number of rankings has multiplied, they have expanded in scope and breadth, comparisons have become international or even global, and they are receiving global attention. The two most widely recognised global rankings are those produced by the Times Higher Education Supplement, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, but there are certainly many more.
There are many reasons for this contemporary expansion of rankings. One is a general increasing focus on science and higher education in the global market, which has made science and universities important targets for debate and reform. Not least visible in the European discourse we find great hopes and expectations that science and its entailments will help us produce a “knowledge society” of the future, creating strong public and political pressures to reform and to attempt to govern the production and use of science and education. Along with this come demands for universities to be held accountable to society at large for their work and its results; through reports, evaluations, audits and assessments of scientists and of science – in particular, measuring what is considered to be “relevant”, “useful” and “applicable” for businesses or for society at large.
In this context rankings have developed to form part of an audit and accountability movement in the scientific field, thus constituting an element in what Michael Power, a British accounting researcher, has described as the “Audit Society”1. This term describes a society where the ideals, visions and norms of audits and accountability are permeating and where rankings can be considered an audit technology constituting a certain form of controlling and scrutinising universities “at a distance”. Thus, another important reason for the expansion of rankings is that they have become interlinked with other forms of assessments and evaluations of universities and of academic activity, such as accreditation, research assessments, and quality audits. The burgeoning interest in bibliometrics is also related to this development.
Rankings and higher education reform
Another, and equally important, explanation of the popularity and expansion of rankings is the interest these measures are creating in the academic field. Rankings are clearly influencing individual universities and their strategies, shaping the aspirations and goals as well as the means and principles for organisational reforms and evaluations of organisations and their members. The significance of this development is most clearly seen when we look at how a particular scientific field or area has responded to and acted on rankings, and how the field as such has changed in the process of engaging in rankings. My studies of rankings of management education institutions and programmes suggest that rankings are influencing the structuring of this entire field – shaping how management education evolves in an international context, how it develops common values, assumptions and norms about what is proper and good practice for management education organisations, and how it adopts common practices of evaluation and assessment2.
While there are clear differences between rankings in the general university field and those in management education, the logics and principles of rankings are largely the same: they produce and diffuse a public view of education and educational institutions, they simplify and quantify specific qualities and characteristics of schools and programmes and they create hierarchies among the ranked units. In so doing, rankings construct and promote a particular view of higher education, of science and of its organisations, although this view may vary depending on the field and on the particular rankings and measures used for assessment.
Distinctively for the management education field, the rankings have constructed a market and diffused market principles and ideals. Explicitly aiming to provide a “customer view” of education, these rankings have developed criteria that are focused on assessing the market standing of schools, and serving the interest of students and recruiters on the perceived market for management education programmes. Following the introduction of international rankings by newspapers such as the Financial Times, many institutions significantly changed orientation to become more international in focus and to recognise their competitive standing relative to other providers. Acting on this perceived competition, business schools organise to meet the demands of the market; setting up PR offices, starting or expanding recruitment activities and alumni relations functions and making competitor analyses.
In setting criteria for competition in this international market, the rankings have created and promoted what can be characterised as a template for what a good and proper business school is and should be including, for instance, what kinds of programmes should be taught, to which students, and what kinds of value these “customers” are seeking. These templates are enacted and used by business schools in identity-formation and reform processes, pushing, for instance, the MBA programme as a core element of an international business school. In this process other values and aspects of business schools, such as research, are being downplayed.
As a further influence on the field, the very clear hierarchical ordering of schools promoted in these tables, which are updated annually but tend to be very consistent over time, at least for the top positions, creates clear differentiation among organisations in the field. Particular schools and programmes become models for others to imitate, as well as models used for constructing and revising the assessments and evaluations. This is likely resulting in certain conformity within the field or, in the long run, to the redistribution of resources among members of the field.
Rankings and the future governance of science
We learn from rankings of management education that these are consequential for individual institutions and their managers but also for the development of the field. Shaping ideas about what is a good and proper business school, good education etc., rankings are becoming powerful tools – for business schools, for the media, and for other interested parties – to promote a particular view of education, of business schools, and of positions and/or status within the field. Whether we believe the influence of rankings is good or bad may vary, but it should make us wary about how, by whom, and for what purposes these rankings are being produced and spread.
In contrast to rankings in management education, the current rankings in the wider university field do not just provide the public with a particular view of education. Rather, these rankings have become influential in an ongoing debate on the governance of universities and of science more broadly. We see a large number of actors – including academics, professional organisations, universities, and interest organisations – take part in the debate on rankings. Moreover, these rankings are increasingly being linked to the public governance of universities as actors such as governments and the EU are beginning to develop or use rankings in their own evaluations of scientific activity. While it is still too early to assess the full implications of such developments we can easily imagine significant effects on the structuring as well as the governance of academic activity and on universities, and quite possibly even on the forms of knowledge being produced and valued within the academic field.
Linda Wedlin, PhD
Department of Business Studies
Uppsala University
www.fek.uu.se
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