Emoscapes and commercial university rankers: the role of affect in global higher education policy

Abstract

ABSTRACTA concerted attempt to offer an affect (emotions, desires, moods, and/or attitudes) lens underlying the global university rankings (GURs) phenomenon remains absent. Using two commercial ranker case studies (Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS)), this article provides a critical policy analysis illuminating how rankers use emoscapes (affective landscapes) in globalizing HE policy. Based on an analysis of publicly available rankers’ texts, it demonstrates how such rankers construct, exploit, and mobilize emoscapes framing policy problems and offering solutions, thus establishing and maintaining their global HE authority. It reveals two ways this happens. First, by capitalizing on a global precarity emoscape, rankers mobilize policy through affective representational infrastructures to sell policy ideas and tools aimed at enhancing institutions’ global prestige defined by their own ranking measures. Second, rankers mobilize a trust emoscape by sponsoring and co-ordinating HE gatherings (another form of affective infrastructure), thus shaping the ‘public moods’ and binding people’s desires for best practices, student mobility, and/or student recruitment. It concludes that emoscapes are vital to these rankers’ activities in framing policy and selling their policy solutions, and requires more attention in future critical policy research.