Full Description
For many institutions, to ignore your university's ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship, or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact.
Conceptually unique in its scope, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge addresses the lack of empirical research behind university and journal ranking systems. Chapters from internationally recognized scholars in decolonial studies provide readers with robust frameworks to understand the intersections of coloniality and Indigeneity and how they play out in higher education. Contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts explore the political economy of rankings within the contexts of the Global North and South, and examine alternatives to media-driven rankings. This book allows readers to consider the intersections of power and knowledge within the wider contexts of politics, culture, and the economy, to explore how assumptions about gender, social class, sexuality, and race underpin the meanings attached to rankings, and to imagine a future that confronts and challenges cognitive, environmental, and social injustice.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Michelle Stack
Theme 1: Geopolitics, Rankings, and Journal Impact Factor
1. International University Rankings as Cultural Imperialism: Implications for the Global South
Marion Lloyd and Imanol Ordorika
2. Unfolding National Approaches to University Rankings in Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America
Creso M. Sá, Nadiia Kachynska, Emma Sabzalieva, and Magdalena Martinez
3. Global University Rankings' Visual Media, Cartography, and Geopolitics of Knowledge
Riyad A. Shahjahan, Annabelle Estera, and Vivek Vellanki
Theme 2: Cost of Knowledge, Rankings, and Journal Impact Factor
4. Academic Culture in Transition: Measuring Up for What in Taiwan?
Chuing Prudence Chou
5. What Counts in Research? Dysfunction in Knowledge Creation and Moving Beyond
Heather Morrison
6. Marginalizing the Marginalized: How Rankings Fail the Global South
Ralf St. Clair
Theme 3: Influence of Rankings on Institutional and Individual Well-Being
7. Between Local Distinction and Global Reputation: University Rankings and Changing Employment in Japan
Mayumi Ishikawa
8. Rankings as Surveillance Assemblage
Gary R.S. Barron
9. Motivation and Well-Being of Faculty and Graduate Students: Empirical Relations with University Rankings
Nathan C. Hall
10. Beyond Rankings and Impact Factors
Michelle Stack and André Elias Mazawi
Contributors
Index
