Thanks for the nice words about my blog, but it’s so hard to keep up! But let me return the compliment – your posts are really great reading, very thought provoking.

@ Mohammad: thanks for that!

@ Andrew: thanks for your thoughts on the issue. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating a ‘nationalist turn’ in higher education. And yes, from an individual perspective, I can totally understand the choice for a ‘name school’. It’s just worrying that this reinforces the prestige game… On the other hand, I do reckognise that this prestige game has a lot of benefits. Cross-national and cross-organisational learning can contribute to the quality.

I just wonder whether international rankings (because of its simplification and quantitative reduction of the term quality) perform this function. I think the obsession with rankings and so-called ‘world class universities’ creates a risk of neglecting some of the functions of universities in the national or regional domain (functions which are usually not included in ranking criteria). Some of these issues are explored in Altbach’s book on world class universities in Asia and Latin America and also by Steiner-Khamsi’s (also from TC Columbia if I’m correct) book on educational lending and borrowing.

B.t.w.: great blog you started! Interesting posts…

I’m not convinced myself that the role of rankings at the international level is precisely analogous to the role that the USNWR rankings have come to play in the U.S., even though there are emerging overlaps that are worth monitoring. There’s undeniably an increasingly globalized economy of prestige and reputation, but under conditions of globalization and increasing affluence, the thought that individuals would choose to remain bound to local or national universities that meet ‘national needs’ rather than pursue an educational career that enhances individual social and economic mobility is becoming outdated. From the perspective of an individual student and/or his family, why not pursue education at a ‘name’ school or a degree that will give your resume the semblance of ‘international experience’ If going abroad will promote your career prospects and life chances, why not do so? Universities, in turn, are turning away from their mission of training national/local elites for national/local leadership; rather, seeing the emerging network of trans- and international affiliations among individuals across borders, it makes some degree of sense that they too, would attempt to ‘internationalize’ in order to develop their own networks of support and influence, regardless of where they may be. Rankings of course feed into this, but it’s only part and parcel of a larger system of distributing reputation and prestige along increasingly complicated and dense social networks.

The curious outcome of this, I think, is increasing emphasis on English-language instruction. Having worked as an international student advisor before becoming a graduate student in education, I’ve noticed the tremendous boom in demand for English-language instruction and education from English-language countries. It’s not the rankings that drives this so much as a determination that the transmission of knowledge – and prestige – is going to be done on the basis of English, and that any individual who wants to enhance employment and social mobility prospects ought to establish some fluency in that language. Of course, universities understand this, but risk overplaying their card when they invite more students than they can sustain without compromising the appearance of quality, as has happened at various institutions.