The global ranking game: narrowing academic excellence through numerical objectification

Abstract

The objective of this article is to study some of the intended and unintended effects on academe of the evolving global ranking game. I will start with some broader points on the global ranking game, the formal terms and economic interests it promotes, then continue with a presentation of the Shanghai ranking and its main rival the Times Higher Education. Through reversed engineering, I will bring out the main problems of the Shanghai ranking. I will finish with some of the key features of the demand side, the uses and effects of the tool: the psychosocial mechanisms that reproduce ranking and the lock-ins it creates.