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Meritocracy or reputation? The role of rankings in the sorting of international students across universities
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Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoḡlu, Baltaru, Roxana D. and Cebolla-Boado, Héctor (2024) Meritocracy or reputation? The role of rankings in the sorting of international students across universities. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 22 (2). 252-263 . doi:10.1080/14767724.2022.2070131 ISSN 1476-7724.
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WRAP-Meritocracy-or-reputation-The-role-of-rankings-in-the-sorting-of-international-students-across-universities-Baltaru-22.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (1678Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2022.2070131
Abstract
University rankings have gained prominence in tandem with the global race towards excellence and as part of the growing expectation of rational, scientific evaluation of performance across a range of institutional sectors and human activity. While their omnipresence is acknowledged, empirically we know less about whether and how rankings matter in higher education outcomes. Do university rankings, predicated on universalistic standards and shared metrics of quality, function meritocratically to level the impact of long-established reputations? We address this question by analysing the extent to which changes in the position of UK universities in ranking tables, beyond existing reputations, impact on their strategic goal of international student recruitment. We draw upon an ad hoc dataset merging aggregate (university) level indicators of ranking performance and reputation with indicators of other institutional characteristics and international student numbers. Our findings show that recruitment of international students is primarily determined by university reputation, socially mediated and sedimented over the long term, rather than universities’ yearly updated ranking positions. We conclude that while there is insufficient evidence that improving rankings changes universities’ international recruitment outcomes, they are nevertheless consequential for universities and students as strategic actors investing in rankings as purpose and identity.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||
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Subjects: | L Education > LB Theory and practice of education | ||||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Universities and colleges - Ratings and rankings, Education, Higher, Students, Foreign -- Education (Higher), Students, Foreign -- Great Britain, Foreign study | ||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Globalisation, Societies and Education | ||||||||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||||
ISSN: | 1476-7724 | ||||||||||
Official Date: | 2024 | ||||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 22 | ||||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||||
Number of Pages: | 12 | ||||||||||
Page Range: | 252-263 | ||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/14767724.2022.2070131 | ||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 30 May 2022 | ||||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 31 May 2022 | ||||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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