This study examines international brain race for world-class universities as measured by the QS World University Rankings (QS) and the Academic Ranking of World Universities, particularly in the context of Asian nations' institutional competition and benchmarking against American counterparts. Applying mixed methods with statistical analysis of…

Higher education (HE) is a global enterprise. Its success (or failure) is integral to and a powerful indicator of the knowledge-producing and talent-attracting capacity of nations. But, the landscape in which HE operates today has become extremely complex; there are many more demands and many constituencies, each with an impact on and a voice in…

Many organizations have a tendency toward misalignment of "authority," "responsibility," and "accountability" that causes poor decision-making. There are natural consequences that result, similar to touching fire and getting burned. When those key elements are not properly aligned, the organization can experience…

In the present study we provide an interpretation of a general narrative of transnational governance of higher education. All the elements of the narrative--competition, ranking autonomy and accountability--are visibly present in contemporary higher education policy agenda. We examine these not as separate ideas and practices but as an interlinked…

As the education policy landscape shifts toward a system of outcomes-based accountability, evaluation and research have grown increasingly vital. This is especially true for for-profit education firms, which must overcome skepticism, scrutiny, or even outright hostility in a field that has long been suspicious of the profit motive and where the…

This paper describes how a locally developed school ranking system affected student enrolment patterns in British Columbia over time. In developing an annual school "report card" that was published in newspapers and online, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute created a marketplace for school choice by devising an accountability scheme…

This article describes and analyses some crucial aspects in the latest reforms of Swedish upper secondary education. For decades Sweden stood out as a special case in several respects, in particular the integration of different tracks in upper secondary education; offering second chances to dropouts, and success in terms of equality and…

This article discusses how the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability mechanism of No Child Left Behind makes use of supposedly objective standardized test scores to describe schools in a certain way when the very same results could serve to draw very different conclusions. Examining the proficiency scores of students from a specific middle…

This article inquires into the "calculative practices" that are used to regulate quality in higher education. After providing a historical snapshot of the antecedents of quality regimes, I discuss university ranking systems (league tables) and the UK's Research Assessment Exercise. I ask two questions: first, what do the visibilities of…