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I am deeply sympathetic to academics whose language is other than English and who feel left out in the cold not only by various university rankings, but also by the predominance of English in scholarly publication, conferences, e-mail exchanges,
etc., etc. I frequently feel embarrassed by the evident failure of so many of my Anglophone colleagues to master even the rudiments of a foreign language. Yet even if all native Anglophone academics were completely fluent in one or two languages other than
English the problem would still remain. In a globalizing multi-multi-lingual world there has to be a lingua franca to facilitate academic exchange. For better or worse, this common language is English. In the not-too-distant future it may well be Chinese.
No matter what the lingua franca may be, each of us faces positive and negative payoffs. As things now stand, the positive payoff for native English speakers is obvious; the negative payoff is the intellectual impoverishment that comes from an inability to
penetrate the many hidden riches of other languages and cultures. For those whose native language is not English the negative payoff is equally obvious; the positive payoff is the ease with which they can operate in at least two linguistic registers and reap
the practical benefits and cultural consolations of both. Now, what about those appalling and profoundly biased university rankings? Of course, we probably have no option but to live with them. Like the dreaded departmental evaluation systems that now run
rife in a number of different countries they are beyond our control in the immediate short run. That said, there is now a growing chorus of critique and complaint around the world about these humiliating instruments of social control and biased decision-making.
We must keep up this critique until all or at least most of our colleagues (even in business schools) are made conscious of what is at stake. Until a majority of academics themselves become persuaded of these irrationalities in our professional lives we will
have to live with the consequences.
Hi All,
At my university, we are told quite frequently by the Vice-Chancellor that these rankings matter to students and which universities they choose to go to. Not sure if this is true or not, but they have a powerful ideological effect on the internal organisation and prioritisation of teaching and research.
Cheers,Holly.
On 11/03/2016, at 9:50 AM, Francis Collins <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
Not a UK-based perspective – but hopefully the following adds to debates nonetheless…Rankings are obviously one of the most pervasive dimensions of higher education today. If its not THE or QS or another international ranking exercise its the domestic rankings that intersect and diverge from them, the internal ranking of departments and schools in terms of student income, research revenue or international reputation. Rankings are everywhere and a lot of the time ‘we’ have a conflicted kind of relationship with them – we recognise what they do to us and our institutions but we also accept or sometimes even use them to our own ends, or what we think is our own ends.
There is a lot of literature, of varying perspectives and insight, on rankings in the field of higher education. One of the issues that emerges there is the way in which ranking really alters existing forms of reputation and entices institutions and individuals to be more performance oriented but also oriented towards those things that are being measured, so we not only recognise the power of rankings but also work towards achieving higher performance even as we know the problems associated with this. Higher education and academic work has long been tied up with performance and distinction of course but the governing by numbers that rankings induce is particularly pernicious.
WHO are the beneficiaries of such rankings? Well in the first instance it is those who do the ranking – QS, THE in the international ranking systems but also of course a whole range of other actors and institutions. An interesting example that diverges a bit from classic rankings is I-graduate, which surveys international students and provides internal but nonetheless significant and influential metrics to universities that allow them to supposedly better tailor their offerings and services to fee paying international students. The contracts for this type of work are huge and the impact of the results are substantial as anyone who has sat on a university international committee will know.
With a a few colleagues in Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand we’ve been doing some work around rankings and in particular the way in which these metrics generate rank-seeking behaviour in universities. We speak to institutional leaders in East Asia for example who provide sophisticated critiques of the ways that rankings are flawed and biased towards Anglophone institutions but then talk about the ways in which they have reshaped institutional practices to achieve higher rankings, effectively normalising the flaws and biases in these systems. Domestic reputations get turned upside down by this, corporatisation or corporate-style university behaviour tends to lead to better results, and all sorts of incentives are entered into the day to day life of the university that alter what is expected of academics, students and other people in the university. Of course, this is not a one way story and we’ve come across instances where domestic student groups in particular have articulated collective positions against the emphasis on ranking – some staging protests in Korea for example on the timing of domestic ranking releases. The students’ claims are that these rankings measure the wrong things, undermine diversity in universities and are increasing the level of tuition fees because of the costs involved in participation.
Some of this is covered in this recent publication: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-015-9941-3; or behind the paywall here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282753947_Ranking_and_the_Multiplication_of_Reputation_reflections_from_the_frontier_of_globalizing_higher_education
It would be great to here more of how rankings shape our behaviour as well as that of our institutions – both in the UK but also around the world.
RegardsFrancis
--Francis L. CollinsSenior Lecturer, GeographyRutherford Discovery FellowUniversity of Auckland
Nation and Migration: population mobilities, desires and state practices in 21st century New Zealand
Publications:
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, 11 March 2016 6:13 am
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: THE, "international rankings" and the hyper-parochial academia
I've also wondered, 'WHO is served by such rankings'. Surely not academic staff - I can't imagine a lecturer or reader saying to themsleves, 'OK I find I'm working at institutution rank #234 but I really want to go and work at institution #5 (which happens to be 250 miles from where I live and would involve massive upheaval in my life, family etc) (and assuming institution #5 happens to have a vacancy that suits me just now) (and I will get that vacancy)'. Maybe these rankings are useful to students who have more geographical flexibiloity in where they apply. Maybe to HEFCE here in the UK or its equivalents in other countries, although surely they know the rankings anyway. Maybe to competitive VCs. .....
Anyway surely an overall ranking masks massive differences in departments. Its conceivable that institution #234 has a brilliant law department, perhaps better than the law department at #5 say, because #234 specialises in the humanities but #5 excels in the physical sciences,
Just asking, who mainly uses / benefits from these rankings?
Dr Hillary J. Shaw
Director and Senior Research Consultant
Shaw Food Solutions
Newport
Shropshire
TF10 8QE
www.fooddeserts.org
-----Original Message-----
From: simone tulumello <[log in to unmask]>
To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:17
Subject: THE, "international rankings" and the hyper-parochial academia
Hi critters,I've been in this list for some time, and there's an issue that has not got a lot of attention - and I guess why. While we hve been debating a lot of privatization, corporatization (and so forth) of academia and, especially, the publishing system, I don't remember a lot of talks about the "rankings".THE has just released the European 2016 best universities ranking.Guess what, 4 out of 5 best universities are in the UK, and 6 out of 10 best.
Shall we talk about the inconsitencies of such "rankings"? To make an example, my university (University of Lisbon) is not listed, while there's one of its schools (Instituto Superior Tecnico)!Roars, an Italian based group of researchers, has been making a huge work in showing how unscientific are this and other rankings (here, for example).
To me, it is not surprising that UK-based organizations make rankings that would favor the UK. I am astonished by the fact that "we", the international academic community, accept such rankings as "international", just because... they are in English!
Well, I'd love to hear some comments from UK-based academics...:)
Best wishes, and... congrats to people in the top ten!Simone
--
Simone Tulumello
Post-doc research fellow, ULisboa, Instituto de Ciências SociaisFulbright visiting scholar, University of Memphis, Department City and Regional Planning
latest publications:Tulumello S. (2015), Fear and Urban Planning in Ordinary Cities: From Theory to Practice, Planning Practice & Research, 30(5), 477-496. Doi: 10.1080/02697459.2015.1025677Seixas J., Tulumello S., Corvelo S., Drago A. (2015). Dinâmicas sociogeográficas e políticas na Área Metropolitana de LIsboa em tempos de crise e austeridade. Cadernos Metrópole, 17(34), 371-399. Doi 10.1590/2236-9996.2015-3404
Dr. Holly Randell-Moon
Department of Media, Film and Communication
6th Floor Richardson Building
Central Campus
University of Otago
Dunedin 9016
New Zealand
Area Chair, Religion
Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand, PopCAANZ
Religion after Secularization in Australia
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"Replace us with the things that do the job better. Replace us with the things that do the job better" - Hot Chip