Ranking article: The building of weak expertise: the work of global university rankers
University rankers are the subject of much criticism, and yet they remain influential in the field of higher education. Drawing from a two-year field study of university ranking organizations, interviews with key correspondents in the sector, and an analysis of related documents, I introduce the concept of weak expertise. This kind of expertise is the result of a constantly negotiated balance between the relevance, reliability, and robustness of rankers� data and their relationships with their key readers and audiences. Building this expertise entails collecting robust data, presenting it in ways that are relevant to audiences, and engaging with critics. I show how one ranking organization, the Times Higher Education (THE), sought to maintain its legitimacy in the face of opposition from important stakeholders and how it sought to introduce a new �Innovation and Impact� ranking. The paper analyzes the strategies, methods, and particular practices that university rankers undertake to legitimate their knowledge�and is the first work to do so using insights gathered alongside the operations of one of the ranking agencies as well as from the rankings� conference circuit. Rather than assuming that all of these trust-building mechanisms have solidified the hold of the THE over its audience, they can be seen as signs of a constant struggle for influence over a skeptical audience.
Higher Education 13 April 2017
DOI: 10.1007/s10734-017-0147-8
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10734-017-0147-8
