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…

Institutional accreditation in higher education holds universities accountable through external evaluation; at the same time, accreditation constitutes an opportunity for higher education leaders to demonstrate the quality of their institutions. In an increasingly global field of higher education, in which quality practices become diffused across…

In the era of globalization, accountability, and benchmarking, university rankings have achieved a kind of iconic status. The major ones--the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, or the "Shanghai rankings"), the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds Limited) World University Rankings, and the "Times Higher Education" World…

With the expansion of higher education across the globe in response to the creation of knowledge economies and learning societies, governments have become increasingly interested in ensuring value for money from their investments. In determining their comparative economic advantage, nation states have increasingly focused on the…

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…

International comparisons of American education have become so popular and widespread in the reform debates of the last several decades that many of the current centerpieces of the American reform movement were shaped through evidence and speculation on what other more educationally successful nations were doing that the U.S. was not. The current…