Dimension 3: University Rankings and the Global Landscape of Higher Education: Using University Rankings to Promote Local Interests

Abstract

This chapter intends to explain how global university rankings can be understood as a mechanism holding Taiwan’s interests within the context of the emergence of an international higher education market and the prospect of regionalisation in East Asia. To illustrate Taiwan’s interests in university ranking systems, the chapter argues that league tables can be used to promote Taiwan’s interests in three ways. Firstly, it pointed out that university rankings have been taken by the Taiwanese government as a metric system to indicate the standard of universities, thereby reflecting their distance from the status of world-class university. In this sense, rankings are used as a governing tool to align the architecture of Taiwan’s higher education system, thereby advancing its competitiveness. Secondly, university rankings are seen as a zoning technology promoting the growing trends toward regionalisation of higher education in East Asia. Thirdly, university rankings are considered as a mechanism of agenda setting promoting the discourses of Chineseness in global higher education. These two anticipations are developed based on the context of China’s rise and the emergence of the idea of the Greater China in higher education. They are involved in Taiwan’s interests, as it is believed that the Taiwanese higher education sector can plausibly extend its influences in the process of regionalisation.