Different measures of international faculty and their impacts on global rankings

Abstract

This study analyzed how the ranking status has changed at various higher education system levels by applying different definitions of international faculty. Among the four measures (birthplace, current citizenship, and the country of bachelor and doctoral education), this study found that international faculty measured by the country of doctoral studies produced significantly different international outlook scores and thus ranking status from that based on birthplace or citizenship. Specifically, major English-speaking systems such as the UK, Canada, and Australia hire a large number of faculty who are foreign citizens while non-English speaking systems (Italy, Portugal, China, Korea, and Brazil) hire more local academics who have earned their doctoral degree abroad. This suggests that these non-English speaking countries are systematically under-rated in their international outlook scores by the adoption of the birthplace-based or citizenship-based international faculty measures. As an alternative, this study proposes to update the international faculty measure using a combination of citizenship of employment and doctoral training to minimize this systemic bias.