Ranking and the multiplication of reputation: reflections from the frontier of globalizing higher education

Abstract

Over the last two decades, enumeration has become a critical force in crafting the governmentalities of globalizing higher education. Whether in the glossy Web sites and documentation of the world's 'top universities' or in more fine-tuned regional and subject guides, accreditation schemes, journal metrics or h-indexes, technologies for measuring and ranking academic performance have not only created new imaginaries of reputation but also started to reshape institutional behavior in the pursuit of enhanced performance. In this paper, we critically explore these governmentalities of globalizing higher education through a discussion of the competing logics and landscapes of reputation and ranking in two leading universities in South Korea. Our analysis draws attention to the ways in which university rankings have generated a new multi-scalar geography of institutional reputation, the mismatch between quality, reputation and ranking, and the new kinds of institutional behaviors that are emerging to respond to the proliferation of ranking systems. Through this analysis, our paper offers two critical contributions to the current literature on university reputation. Firstly, we offer a critique of the high-level metrics used in university ranking and their implications for the quality of institutions. Secondly, we also argue for more nuanced accounts of ranking and reputation by scholars of higher education and in particular a greater emphasis on their successes and failures, the competing logics and unexpected outcomes of ranking and their implications for the future of universities.