If there is one thing all university rankings have in common, it is that they are the target of widespread criticism. This article takes the many challenges university rankings are facing as its point of departure and asks how they navigate their hostile environment. The analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we unveil two modes of ranking…

As rankings have become increasingly institutionalized in higher education, so too have the strategic responses adopted by universities to address them. A key component of these responses is the development of new expertise, embodied in personnel and organizational units, dedicated to managing quantitative assessments. We draw on a qualitative…

Initiatives to build research universities to have world-class universities, the creator and the disseminator of scientific knowledge in knowledge-based economies, are among the most important policy reactions in higher education systems. With an increase in demands on greater accountability, transparency, and efficiency, studies investigating the…

In response to global competition in higher education, university rankings have been developed. These have been interpreted as indicating the regions and countries with the most prestigious and competitive higher education institutions. The rankings are viewed as important in many countries, but their role is ambiguous and contested in the Nordic…

Global university rankings influence students' choices and higher education policies throughout the world. When rankers not only evaluate universities but also provide them with consulting, analytics, or advertising services, rankers are vulnerable to conflicts of interest that may potentially distort their rankings. The paper assesses the impact…

Ranking systems are readily available and offer a simplistic way to differentiate among universities. However, end-users are not informed about the criteria and methods used to develop the ranking systems. Whereas ranking systems are used by prospective students, their lack of reliability and transparency outweigh their benefits. There are a few…

The current study aims to examine how and why actors contest the business education field through rankings. Inspired by the field structuration process and field level change, we argue that categorization systems, in this case, rankings, construct boundaries of the business education field and redefine authority and elites for the field. Ten…

The paper introduces a novel approach to university rankings that considers a university's contribution to sustainable development. It addresses the usual controversies surrounding the construction of rankings using composite indicators. The conventional approach typically involves normalizing sub-indicators and applying subjective weights for…

In recent years the taught masters course has become an even more important component of the curriculum portfolio for universities in the UK and elsewhere. In the spring of 2021, the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group (SACWG) surveyed a small number of English and Welsh universities to compare assessment regulations for taught…

This paper analyses international student prospectuses from twenty-two Japanese universities involved in the Top Global University Program (TGUP) to examine how universities in Japan present and understand internationalization. International prospectuses were analysed using qualitative text analysis to generate a series of themes connected to…

The sociologies of quantification, university rankings, and infrastructure are a loosely connected set of scholarly endeavors. Research in these areas typically examines production of certain types of quantification, their effects, and institutionalization. Despite these commonalities, scholars have noted a lack of conceptual coherence, debates on…

Higher education institutions increasingly live in environments in which they are subject to evaluation and rankings. We examine the way in which Italian (mostly public) universities adapted to the new landscape created by the official research assessments, which have produced rankings at national level, published in 2013 and 2016. We compare the…

The study is aimed at contributing to the research of developing the employer brand of a university with the help of a special university project. Our basic research question is whether a Jubilee project could be used to develop the employer brand of a university and strengthen employee engagement. The authors present the possibilities of…

Employment interviews can be challenging for autistic people. In addition to standard interview procedures often being inaccessible, features associated with autism (including atypical emotional expression, eye-contact, and gestures) may lead to negative first impressions. Research using vignettes and 'thin slices' of communication indicate that…

We offer a Cultural Studies approach--a transdisciplinary field of study critically examining contemporary culture--to illuminate the roles of cultural producers and consumers in mediating the meaning of university rankings amidst a global media landscape. Using the case study of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and drawing on the concepts of: (1)…