Rankings dominate higher education policy making, although little is known about the experiences of those involved in perpetuating rankings. This paper explores middle-level academic leaders' sensemaking about university rankings and related policies in East Asia. Since university rankings have affected higher education policies and strategies…

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…

This study focuses on the role of visual resources in constructing the brand identity of Chinese universities. By drawing on the theoretical concept of corporate visual identity (CVI), this study analyzed universities' logos and typography of names from the social semiotic approach. Nine elite Chinese universities were selected as the corpus to…

Although universities are often characterised as 'elite', institutions can attain status in multiple dimensions--reputation, research, money and selectivity. We studied 21st century public universities in the United States, using latent profile analysis to identify which universities followed each path to status. Most universities pursued none,…

The dramatic salience of university rankings is usually attributed to a number of macro-level trends, such as neoliberal ideology, the spread of audit culture, and globalization in the broadest sense. We propose that the institutionalization of university rankings cannot be fully accounted for without a better understanding of the meso-level…

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…

Although higher education is positioned as a site of opportunity for young women in the UK, not all female applicants experience straightforward pathways into this arena. This paper focuses on a group of 16 high-achieving girls from working-class backgrounds who are striving for academic success, in the form of top grades and places at high-tariff…

University rankings have gained prominence in tandem with the global race towards excellence and as part of the growing expectation of rational, scientific evaluation of performance across a range of institutional sectors and human activity. While their omnipresence is acknowledged, empirically we know less about whether and how rankings matter in…

Purpose: This study aims to explore how student recruitment practitioners at regional Australian universities strategise student recruitment efforts in Thailand. There is scarce research addressing regional universities, with prior studies focusing on metropolitan universities. Similarly, most prior studies have focused on high-volume markets,…

Underlying current research on China's world-class university (WCU) policy approaches are analytical foci that privilege the agency of social actors and the problem-solving approach to policy analysis. Foucauldian poststructuralists draw our attention to policy document, which is seen as a discourse that organizes and administers society. Inspired…

This study investigates the influence of university brand image, satisfaction, and alumni's university identification on positive word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. The model is tested using data collected from a sample of 1000 university alumni, an important and under-researched stakeholder group. A contribution is provided by enhancing our…

This study analyzes the factors influencing the stakeholder perspectives on of Higher Education Institution (HEI) rankings, reporting data collected from 1232 participants through a survey method and employing the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model and complementary models for the analyses. Our primary focus was to…

This research article establishes the relationship between key performance indicators and the academic and research quality performance and assessment and quality assurance of any large multidisciplinary academic and research institution or university. The indicators in terms of qualitative and quantitative are being proposed below and are…

Since the public intellectuals of the 1960s, there has been a shift towards the celebrity academic, as subjects such as history and science have transferred into popular television entertainment, often with female academics as the presenters. Using a case study of the British media, a post-feminist lens has been applied to examine how 17 celebrity…

To investigate the relationship between Chinese university funding and academic output, we collected data on the scale and the structure of funding and academic output of 36 World-Class universities under construction in China during 2013-21 and 2014-22. Furthermore, we empirically analyzed the effects of funding scale and structure on academic…