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"…

Since the 1990s, Singapore has firmly established its reputation in the global education policy space as one of the best education systems in the world. However, existing policy transfer literature on Singapore has been mainly interested in Singapore as a decontextualised, ahistorical case, rather than as a unique player in the global education…

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…

This article reviews the history of world university rankings and their large-scale impact. It then analyzes some of the criticism of the world ranking systems before exploring their impact in the context of Thai universities. The authors' assertions centre on the premise that much of the criticism of these ranking systems can be divided into…

This book offers new insights and methodological tools to improve our understandings of how prestigious schools in Poland navigate the major political, social and cultural crosscurrents. The range of choice for elite schooling in Poland has expanded during its post-communist transformation. However, while elite education in countries such as the…

Funders are increasingly requiring international collaboration for research projects and such projects add to the reputation, rankings and research gravitas of institutions and individual researchers alike. The power asymmetries in global knowledge production means that international research collaboration comes with a range of taken-for-granted…

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…

Global university rankings (GURs) have garnered increasing media attention since their inception. Yet to date, a concerted attempt to offer an affect lens -- emotions, responses, reactions and feelings that are relational and transpersonal -- underlying the mediatisation of GURs remains absent. Drawing on affect theories, we analysed the Indian…

The expansion of university systems across the planet over the last fifty years has led to the emergence of a new policy assemblage -- 'global higher education' that depends on the collection, curation and representation of quantitative data. In this paper I explore the use of data by higher education policy actors to sustain 'epistemic…

A major cluster of economic engines that have changed Asian higher education, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan have all developed high-income societies as well as world-class universities which linked local "knowledge economies" to global science and created hubs for international collaborations and mobility. However, there…

In this article, we examine how the concept of world-class universities has emerged in Chinese higher education at both the sectoral and institutional level. We examine policy decisions related to creating world-class universities on China's mainland and institutional responses to these policies. We then read these policies through "cultural…

Global university rankings are a worldwide trend that emerged in times of the globalisation and internationalisation of higher education. Universities worldwide are now striving to become "world-class" institutions and are constantly aiming to improve their ranking position. Global rankings of universities are thus perceived by many as…

Amid debates about global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs' media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine 135 publicly available visual media (photographs) in the Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) websites to uncover the…

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.…