Who Is Watching the Watchdogs? The Business of Rankings

Abstract

When I started as a professor in 2003, I knew very little about rankings, but soon I could not attend a meeting or convocation without being told I was part of an elite club — a top-ranked school, a world-class school. A colleague from another university explained how his dean sent a proud letter when they went up in the rankings; the following year, however, their ranking went down, and my colleague received an email saying not to worry — the rankings were flawed. I started to count references in meetings to rankings or the importance of being “world class”. What began as a strategy to pass the time in stuffy rooms ultimately led me to begin to question the power and reach of rankings. Today there are 10 global rankings and over 150 national or specialist rankings (89). How did predominately media-generated rankings become such a ubiquitous marker of success, academic quality and legitimacy?.