Rankings and online comparison sites have both facilitated and shaped the marketisation of higher education in England, the UK as a whole and elsewhere. They have facilitated marketisation by introducing greater competition between and within higher education institutions. Ultimately, they accomplish the transformation of qualities into quantities, which is both required by, and a consequence of, the commodification and privatisation of higher education. Rankings have also helped to embed the logic of the market within organisational structures and processes and within the minds and practices of organisational members. In some ways, in a highly regulated UK higher education market, rankings became a substitute for more authentic market mechanisms. However, these processes have intensified with the transfer (in England) of the majority of the cost of study to students and the emergence of more sophisticated websites presenting detailed statistics that enable prospective students to compare courses and institutions on indicators such as modes of student assessment and employment outcomes. This article seeks to understand how different types of university and college are responding to this intensification of rankings logic amidst the further marketisation of higher education in the UK. It employs the concepts of internalisation and institutionalisation to analyse how these responses evolve and vary between institutions at different places in the rankings, but eschews a completely Foucauldian interpretation which, in the author's view, cannot fully explain the responses within institutions (and over time) to ‘data-driven technologies’.

Den kompletten Artikel von William Locke können Sie auf der Website des European Journal of Education finden, das im März eine Sonderausgabe zu: 'Global University Rankings. A Critical Assessment' heraus gegeben hat.
 
Quelle: Locke, W. (2014), The Intensification of Rankings Logic in an Increasingly Marketised Higher Education Environment. European Journal of Education, 49: 77–90. doi: 10.1111/ejed.12060

Global university rankings have portrayed European higher education institutions in varying lights, leading to intense reflection on the figures on the EU and national levels alike. The rankings have helped to construct a policy problem of ‘European higher education’, framing higher education as an element of competitiveness in a global economy. This has also allowed the European Commission to become a key policy actor in higher education that was not traditionally within its mandate. The global university rankings can be seen as a transnational policy discourse that has different variants at a national level, owing to the historical narratives and public values of each state. But the policy prescriptions of the rankings are taking surprisingly similar forms in different countries and have informed reform agendas throughout Europe. At a general level, the rankings are contributing to a convergence in higher education policies in Europe. [...]

Den kompletten Artikel von Tero Erkkilä können Sie auf der Website des European Journal of Education finden, das im März eine Sonderausgabe zu: 'Global University Rankings. A Critical Assessment' heraus gegeben hat.
 
Quelle: Erkkilä, T. (2014), Global University Rankings, Transnational Policy  Discourse and Higher Education in Europe. European Journal of Education,  49: 91–101. doi: 10.1111/ejed.12063
 
Den Einführungsvortrag von Tero Erkkilä zur Sonderausgabe finden Sie auf YouTube

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This article begins with a critical assessment of the impacts of rankings on the European and national landscapes of higher education and analyses their unintended side effects on organisational behaviour of universities. It makes an attempt to frame rankings as a form of transnational policy coordination in which they function as the dominant policy script which basically no university can escape any longer. It is also argued that rankings themselves and their outcomes have become indicators—or better: proxies—for the economic competitiveness of nations.Thus they become loaded with a symbolic value on the basis of which government decisions are taken (e.g. with respect to funding). This symbolic value is then charged with meaning which is no longer related to the actual reality of universities and what they are about. A truly postmodern shift.

Link zum Artikel:
Global University Rankings — Impacts and Unintended Side Effects

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In den weltweiten Rankings finden sich amerikanische Universitäten regelmäßig auf den vorderen Plätzen.
Zunehmend zeigen sich jedoch Risse im amerikanischen Hochschul-System: So nimmt die erschuldung der Universitäten auf der einen und die der Studierenden auf der anderen Seite immer mehr zu, während der Wert und die Qualität eines Bachelor-Abschlusses abnehmen.

What do the holy grail and university rankings have in common? The very possession of them does not produce unbounded wealth. Departing from this metaphor, Andreas Schleicher engages in a fundamental critique of university rankings. As he points out, rankings are always defined through a process of bringing together political, methodological and ethical considerations. In doing so, they are highly sensitive to the variables they are measuring. And since there is no such thing as an agreement on comparable properties of universities and programmes offered, it is essential to discuss thoroughly what to assess, whom to assess and which units to survey and to analyse. According to Schleicher, there are two possibilities: either international organisations such as the OECD do rankings well, or the media will continue to do them poorly. Since information feeding and peer pressure seem to have become more powerful than legislation and regulation, Schleicher pleads for the first option.