Building an ivory tower in the age of globalization? The process of construction hierarchical academic order in contemporary education through international university rankings

- Курбатов, Сергій (orcid.org/0000-0002-8929-7562) (2012) Building an ivory tower in the age of globalization? The process of construction hierarchical academic order in contemporary education through international university rankings In: The Second ISA Forum of Sociology "Social justice and democratization" . International Socilogical Association, м. Буенос Айрес, Аргентина.

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Abstract

University rankings during last decade became extremely popular and “fashionable” topic for general discussions and also for academic researches. As Hazelkorn mentioned in her recently published book (2011), “there is a growing obsession with university rankings around the world. What started as an academic exercise in the early 20th century in the US became a commercial ‘information’ service for students in the 1980s and the progenitor of a ‘reputation race’ with geo-political implications today”. Also there is strong critique of the general idea of ranking regarding educational institutions and the existing methodologies of evaluation of the quality of university performance - “many of institutional leaders set rankings as their benchmark in their vision or master plan for the university. Nevertheless, academics are quite skeptical of rankings because they believe that they mislead higher education institutions as well as have enormous methodological limitations”(Shin, Toutkoushian, Teichler, 2011). Our idea is to look at rankings as a certain innovative technology, which enforces dramatic changes of university education in the context of globalization and helps to create global hierarchy of academic institutions. The creation of global educational space, started in the last decades of the 20th century, provoked numerous challenges for national universities as the centre of producing of the certain type of cultural identity (Readings, 1996). In situation of these changes, rankings become driving tools for university managers how to reform the university. They also shape the concept of “world class university”(Salmi, 2009) as the ideal model (in Weberian sense) of university in contemporary situation. Our idea is to analyze and to compare 3 variants of such academic hierarchies, based in 2011 on the most influential university rankings: 1) Academic ranking of world universities (ARWU); 2) Times higher education world university rankings and 3) QS World University Rankings.

Item Type: Book Section
Keywords: доба глобалізації, академічні ієрархії
Subjects: Science and knowledge. Organization. Computer science. Information. Documentation. Librarianship. Institutions. Publications > 3 Social Sciences > 314/316 Society > 316 Соціологія
Science and knowledge. Organization. Computer science. Information. Documentation. Librarianship. Institutions. Publications > 3 Social Sciences > 37 Education > 37.01/.09 Special auxiliary table for theory, principles, methods and organization of education
Science and knowledge. Organization. Computer science. Information. Documentation. Librarianship. Institutions. Publications > 3 Social Sciences > 37 Education > 378 Higher education. Universities. Academic study
Divisions: Institute of Higher Education > Відділ лідерства та інституційного розвитку вищої освіти
Depositing User: Sergiy Kurbatov
Date Deposited: 20 Apr 2015 08:27
Last Modified: 08 Aug 2018 11:35
URI: https://lib.iitta.gov.ua/id/eprint/8896

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