Abstract
A direct correlation exists between the emergence of international rankings of universities and the pervasive rhetoric and obsession with World Class University (WCU) status. Building on a model first ventured by commercial rankings of colleges and universities in the United States as consumer guides for prospective students—notably the US News and World Report ranking of American colleges and universities—international rankings based on similar formulas made their appearance around 2003.1 As government ministries focused increasingly on research-intensive universities as a path for national economic development, they quickly embraced rankings as a quantifiable source for assessing the place of their universities in the global marketplace.
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P. T M. Marope, P. J. Wells, and E. Hazelkorn, eds. 2013. Rankings and Accountability in Higher Education: Uses and Misuses (Paris: UNESCO Publishing).
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See Philip G. Altbach and Jamil Salmi, The Road to Academic Excellence: The Making of World Class Research Universities, Directions in Development Series (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009).
Jamil Salmi The Challenge of Establishing World Class Universities, Directions in Development Series, World Bank: Washington DC, 2009;
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Jamil Salmi, and Alenoush Saroyan, 2007. “League Tables as Policy Instruments: Uses and Misuses.” Higher Education Management and Policy 19, no.2: 31–68.
See Danie Visser and Marilet Sienaert, “Rational and Constructive Use of Rankings: A Challenge for Universities in the Global South,” in Building World Class Universities: Difference Approaches to a Shared Goal, ed. Qi Wang, Ying Cheng and Nian Cai Liu (The Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2012).
Philip G. Altbach and Jamil Salmi, 2011, The Road to Academic Excellence: The Making of World Class Research Universities, Directions in Development Series. (Washington DC: The World Bank).
Hanna-Mari Aula and Janne Tienari, “Becoming ‘World Class’? ReputationBuilding in a University Merger.” Emerald: Critical Perspectives on International Business 7, no. 1 (2011): 7–29: www.academia.edu/508739/Becoming_WorldClass_Reputation-building_in_a_university_merger.
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Douglass, J.A. (2016). How Rankings Came to Determine World Class. In: Douglass, J.A. (eds) The New Flagship University. International and Development Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137500496_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137500496_1
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