Category: Rankings

More Shanghai Needed

I’m in Shanghai this week, a guest of the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for their biannual conference. It’s probably the best spot on the international conference circuit to watch how governments and institutions are adapting to a world in which their performance is being measured, compared and ranked on a global scale. In discussions like this the subject of rankings is never far away, all the more so at this meeting because its convenor, Professor

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Differentiating University Missions (Part One)

This week, HESA is hosting a conference in Toronto on the subject of Differentiation of University Missions. We’re focusing on this because we think there are a host of factors both inside and outside academia that are pushing institutions towards isomorphism. In a word, there’s a danger that institutions are becoming clones of one another, robotically following the same script – rather like the placid ladies of Stepford. There are obviously a lot of facets to this issue, but broadly,

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