Universities are specific local entities, and as such are in competition with one another for resources and prestige. The general tone of the literature--which sees universities mainly as specific organizations--is quite negative, with competition leading to destructive market and political forces. The tone is surprising, given the extraordinary…

With internationalization now an imperative for institutions of higher learning around the world, this article examines the specific case of how France's elite engineering and business schools, known as the "grandes écoles," have taken on this challenge. Mobilizing work on organizational allomorphism and the "glonacal"…

For two centuries, academics and their universities have competed for prominence and vied to demonstrate that their institutions are at the center of the scholarly world. Scientific advances in particular fields, reciprocal academic visits and conferences, impressive physical architecture, and publishing in shared venues and a "lingua…

Since 1990 there has been remarkable growth and diversification of worldwide capacity and output in science, and a distinctive global science system has emerged, primarily grounded in research universities, fostered by Internet-mediated communication and publication in English, cross-border authorship and researcher mobility. While global science…

Over the past decade, universities in the People's Republic of China have notably progressed in international rankings. Most of the existing literature interested in this development describes the adoption of university rankings in China as a recent import of a global institution, and as being driven by a governmental agenda that seeks to bolster…

The multi-billion-dollar university rankings industry purports to offer insights into the quality of institutions, but the extent to which it does so has consistently been refuted. Critics argue that problematic proxies, composite indexing, homogenising effects, and several other issues make them both unscientific and neo-colonial. This article…

Higher education institutions present key social institutions ensuring the creation and transfer of knowledge, intellectual capital, and innovations. This fact determines the significance of universities in state regulation and allocating financial resources to the best of them is becoming a crucial objective in many countries. Goals of the…

During the pandemic, a number of states instituted hold-harmless funding policies to protect school district financially from declining enrollments (Center for Public Education, 2021). In addition, some school choice policies have protected traditional public schools financially from declining enrollments. Together, these policies raise the…

Economists receive high social recognition in media, politics and business discourses where they often obtain a status as 'star economists' and 'financial prophets'. This paper investigates the social conditions that make the formation of size in the economic sciences possible. It analyses the "institutional constraints,"…

This study aims to unpack policy evaluation and measurement of creating world-class universities in China from an integrated policy analysis. Specifically, an integrated policy analysis of policy evaluation of creating world-class universities concentrated on exploring the world class evaluation index released by the university rankings…

University rankings have become commonplace in higher education. Traditional quantified rankings do not merely measure educational performance: they equally grant status, enforce competition between institutions, and are emblematic for the ongoing capitalization of higher education. Drawing on the field of Science and Technology Studies, this…

UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI.…

Why have regimes and societies that would otherwise argue for their distinctiveness and sovereign decision-making caught 'ranking fever' in HE? Why are they willing to give up their sovereignty in the field of HE, and why do they accept the requirement of homogeneity to succeed in global university rankings? This paradox is explored in the case of…

The competition for international students has spurred higher education institutions (HEIs) to craft marketing campaigns to appeal to potential students, with social media providing an increasingly prominent platform for such interactions. We analyse the social media data trails (Facebook posts) of two Israeli HEIs to reveal how they portray…

The literature suggests that recent years have witnessed a fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation. This paper argues that a reorientation of policy, which is upheld through an initiative known as the Higher Education Sprout Project, indicates the fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation in Taiwan. The paper…