Ranking on the wall, which university is the best of all? : Domestication of global models and epistemic struggles with global university rankings in the Latin American context

Abstract

Global university rankings are very present nowadays in higher education debates. Year after year since the pioneer Shanghai list in 2003, more universities join the rankings, higher education policymakers increasingly justify their decisions in the light of global university ranking results, and researchers express concern about the decreasing diversity in academia given the argued homogenizing effects of the competitive ranking game. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how global university rankings become part of local higher education debates in Latin America. To do so, rhetorical analysis and epistemic governance tools are used to qualitatively analyse 199 press office releases (or news) from the three Latin American top-ranked universities which comprise the São Paulo State university system, in Brazil. The sample ranges between September 3rd, 2007, and November 11th, 2021, respectively the first occurrence of global university rankings in the press office news of the universities studied and the utmost occurrence up to the end of this thesis’ data collection period. The analysis focuses on the justifications given by the universities to participate in the rankings and on how they utilize global university rankings in their persuasive work. The analysis shows that universities do not unconsciously reproduce rankings. In local scale debates, Latin American top-ranked universities use rankings to legitimate themselves, deliberately relativizing whatever ranking results to convince their audiences of their “excellence”. In such a process, universities employ global university rankings to put forward their agendas, which do not necessarily go hand in hand with global or dominant trends.