The resilience of rankings in the neoliberal academy

Abstract

The multi-billion-dollar university rankings industry purports to offer insights into the quality of institutions, but the extent to which it does so has consistently been refuted. Critics argue that problematic proxies, composite indexing, homogenising effects, and several other issues make them both unscientific and neo-colonial. This article outlines these criticisms and argues that if we are to understand the resilience of rankings, we need to acknowledge the context in which they have become ubiquitous. This article offers the prevalence of university rankings as an example of neoliberalism’s conditioning effects on the sector. It is not enough to demonstrate the problematic nature of rankings; we must also ask the question: what must universities be like for them to support rankings despite repeated evidence of their problematic nature? Answering this question should help us engage with the hold that rankings have over us, and it should also help us to imagine the university we want and need.

Contribution: This article brings together literature on neoliberalism in the academy with that on university rankings. It argues that we can only understand the hold that the international rankings industry has by seeing the alignment between the rankings’ methodologies and aims on the one hand and the incursion of a neoliberal ideology across the higher education sector on the other.