Are university rankings like an iron cage that leaves no option but to submit to its logic?

“Using English is the sign of a great mind. Discuss.” Sounds like an absurdly bigoted essay topic? While I’ve made up the topic and while most readers will baulk at such an explicit association of English with academic excellence, most of us have come to accept precisely this equation, even if implicitly. I’m talking about global university rankings.

Over the past decade, university rankings have become incredibly influential. Inside and outside the academy, university rankings undergird policy frameworks and funding allocations. Even if people disagree about this or that form of measurement, the idea that university performance should be measured and ranked is now firmly entrenched. The result is universalized academic competition and the belief that university rankings are meaningful and should guide educational, social and economic policies.

English has become one of the central terrains where competition plays out. Rankings quantify academic performance on the basis of four criteria, which are differently measured and weighted in different rankings: research and publications; learning environment; reputation; and internationalization. As Piller and Cho (2013) demonstrate, except for learning environment, each of these criteria serves to promote English in covert ways despite the fact that each criterion is ostensibly language-neutral.

Research and publications usually privileges English because English-language journals and publishers are more highly ranked, more prestigious and “more international.” Accepting that achieving global impact is the most meaningful form of knowledge production means publishing in English.

Reputation is the most controversial criterion and measured in different ways but obviously linked to all kinds of assumptions. If it is measured, as in one Korean ranking, by asking the HR departments of multinational corporations from which Korean universities they would like to hire graduates, the link with English is not particularly subtle. Graduates who are planning to pursue careers in local or national organizations are not even considered as potential bearers of ‘reputation.’

Finally, the internationalization criterion strongly favours universities where English is the medium of instruction. It puts pressure on non-English-speaking universities to switch to English as a medium of instruction in order to improve their standing in the rankings. Furthermore, other indices of internationalization such as the percentage of international faculty or international students all act as drivers towards increasing the number of classes taught through the medium of English.

In sum, it is obvious that university rankings operate in a way that privileges English and – implicitly – creates a connection between English and excellence. To accept university rankings as drivers of policy is to accept that English means excellence.

University rankings are often touted as a means to hold universities accountable to the public: an institution’s standing in the rankings is a clear indicator of what they are doing with their funding and how they are contributing to the common good, or so the reasoning goes. By contrast, the purveyors of rankings are not accountable to anyone and no consensus as to whether English should be considered as a measurement of academic excellence has ever been sought or emerged. In fact, the equation continues to be hidden precisely because no such consensus exists and is unlikely to emerge.

Instead, university rankings institutionalize the equation between English and excellence de facto.

Max Weber (cited in Erkillä, 2013) compares modern institutional practices of book-keeping, accounting and performance statistics – of which university rankings are a prime example – to an “iron cage,” which leaves no option but to submit to its logic. Submission limits the realms of democracy and ethics and makes alternatives disappear.

How long before we cannot even imagine an alternative to the incipient fact that English is excellence?

Erkkilä, Tero (2013). Global University Rankings, Transnational Policy Discourse and Higher Education in Europe European Journal of Education DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12063

Piller, Ingrid, & Cho, Jinhyun (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy Language in Society, 42 (1), 23-44 DOI: 10.1017/S0047404512000887 This article is now available for open access directly from Cambridge University Press thanks to an Open Access Assistance Grant from the Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University.

University rankings drive the Englishization of global academia

The Intercultural Communication Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics is hosting a seminar at Newcastle University next week devoted to “Intercultural Communication in Higher Education – principles and practices.” Given that internationalization of higher education is all the rage internationally, the seminar could not be more timely. I am one of the invited speakers and, as I cannot be there in person, have just finished recording my lecture about the “Englishization” of global higher education.

I use the term “Englishization” to refer to the spread of English as medium of instruction in institutions of higher education in non-Anglophone countries. A recent case study of English as medium of instruction in higher education in South Korea, particularly at the elite university KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), demonstrates that the pursuit of “global excellence” as expressed through a high rank in global university rankings is a key driver behind the expanding use of English as medium of instruction (Piller & Cho 2013).

University rankings are based on assessments of four broad areas: research and publications, learning environment, reputation of graduates, and internationalization. Of these four areas only ‘learning environment’ is a language-independent variable. It measures things like infrastructure and student-teacher ratio.

The fact that measurement of ‘research and publication,’ usually the most heavily-weighted criterion, is language-dependent is well-known: the most highly ranked journals (as measured by being indexed or having an impact factor) are predominantly published in Anglophone countries and, even if published elsewhere, tend to use English as their medium of publication. Reputation of graduates, too, is language-dependent as it is usually measured through surveys of the HR departments of international corporations where English is widely used.

Here I want to focus on ‘internationalization.’ While ‘internationalization’ is usually the assessment area with the lowest weighting, it is an important aspect of any institution’s strategy to improve its ranking because it is relatively easy to manipulate. Notching up points for ‘internationalization’ takes much less time than to improve research, the learning environment or the reputation of graduates. And achieving a quick jump in rankings through improved internationalization from one year to the next will have flow-on effects on the measurement of research (where reputation also plays a huge role, as evidenced by attempts to influence research reputation votes such as this one by University College Cork) and graduate reputation.

So how is an institution’s ‘internationalization’ measured? In the Korean rankings explored by Piller & Cho (2013), there were four measurements:

• The proportion of foreigners among a university’s teaching staff
• The number of international students
• The number of exchange students
• The proportion of English-medium lectures

Internationalisation is therefore both directly and indirectly language-dependent: the proportion of English-medium lectures is a direct measurement of language; measurements of foreigners among students and faculty are indirectly language-dependent as foreign faculty are more likely to lecture in English than Korean and as the presence of foreign students (even if they are almost exclusively from other non-Anglophone countries, particularly China) is – in circular logic – used as a further justification for the ‘need’ to have English as medium of instruction.

In sum, the desire to perform well on national and international university rankings pushes for English as a medium of instruction in a number of direct and indirect ways. University rankings are phenomenally influential: students base their decisions on where to seek admission on university rankings, governments base their funding decisions on university rankings, the public increasingly understand the value of academia based on university rankings. In that sense, increasing the use of English as medium of instruction is a rational strategy for a university as it has consequences for its position on university rankings. Sadly, in the rush to compete no one seems to have taken pause to reflect on the intrinsic value of the measurements that go into university rankings. Does the proportion of foreigners, for instance, really mean anything much other than, well, the proportion of foreigners?

The benefits to an individual institution of performing highly on university rankings are obvious. The costs of academic competition usually remain hidden. However, there are significant social costs attached to the Englishization of global academia. Here on Language on the Move we have recently discussed the transfer of the burden of language learning from society to the individual; increased social stratification as those who can afford private tuition in English will enjoy better access to higher education than those who cannot; and the damage done to critical inquiry if the medium is more important than the message. Cho (2012) adds educational costs as teachers may feel insecure, or lack proficiency and confidence when teaching in English or students may simply find lectures delivered in English incomprehensible.

All this raises a key question about Englishization and internationalization: What is the meaning of ‘excellence’ if it does not involve service to the common good?

Cho, J. (2012). Campus in English or campus in shock? English Today, 28 (02), 18-25 DOI: 10.1017/S026607841200020X
Piller, I., & Cho, J. (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy Language in Society, 42 (01), 23-44 DOI: 10.1017/S0047404512000887