University rankings provide fodder for university leaders and analysts to debate the quality of education and research within a (inter-)national system and within institutions themselves. In recent months, leading US medical and law schools have attracted attention with their withdrawal from US News and World Report rankings (Weissman, 2022) and underscored the debate on the value of ranking schemes. Global university rankings (GURs) influenced higher education policy discussions since their emergence in 2003 (Diver, 2022).Ranking schemes are tools for students and their parents in university selection processes. GURs are used by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to identify/confirm strengths and weaknesses, foster collaborative partnerships, and benchmark performance and prestige against peers or prospective peers. Global and regional university rankings are used by governments as policy levers with which to engage with universities and set national agenda for investments in research and/or educational programming. The objective of our study was to assess how GURs are used by higher education institutions in the Global South (Ghana). We employed a qualitative case study methodology to explore the responses of four public universities in Ghana towards GURs. In this presentation, we focus on the way in which one institution responded strategically to move up the rankings tables — nationally, regionally andinternationally. This report revealed that, in response to GURs, Ghana’s public universities took conscious policy measures as important tools to engage in a change process within their universities.

Authors: Reuben Plance, Michael Owen

Published in: Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2023)

• Date of Conference: 24-26 October, 2023
• DOI: 10.20533/IICE.2023.10.0025
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-68-6
• Conference Location: Dún Laoghaire, Ireland