At a global level, over recent decades university rankings have become a pervasive and influential social barometer, increasingly shaping public, policy and institutional perceptions of university performance (Pusser & Marginson, 2013; Tight, 2019). Rankings—despite persistent methodology concerns—are broadly accepted internationally as the most effective means to measure the comparative quality of higher education (Hazelkorn, 2015). This elevating significance of university rankings reflects a complex range of factors, including heightening demands for accountability and improved quality in higher education provision, accelerating globalisation and the increasing commodification of learning (Altbach, 2016; Hazelkorn, 2019).

To capitalize on this ubiquity, global rankings publishers have recently moved to produce more regionalised forms of established global scales, fuelling heightening levels of social and institutional anxiety across the global South about the relative quality of local institutions. Given the localized focus of indicators, even universities that are not highly ranked are now increasingly caught in the spotlight of rankings, meaning the effect of these global rankings is increasingly universal in impact (Hazelkorn, 2016). Therefore, although there have been persistent calls in the global South for more multi-dimensional rankings recognising institutional diversity, histories and aspirations outside the Anglosphere (e.g. Estevez Nenninger et al., 2018; Guaglianone, 2018), the hegemony of regionally applied global rankings is establishing itself in local social, policy and institutional discourses around higher education quality. However, only limited research has been undertaken on the direct impact of this on institutional practices, particularly in Latin America (Darwin & Barahona, 2023). 

Given this context, this paper reports on the outcomes of qualitative research that investigated the situated effects of regionalised forms of global university rankings on the strategic, research and pedagogical decisions of institutions in a leading Latin American higher education system. Using a sample of diverse Chilean universities (n=18) as a case study, the research used semi-structured interviews with educational leaders and an artefact analysis to assess the local and potential broader impact of localised forms of global rankings across the system, as well to theorise their possible influence in other systems across the global South experiencing a similar phenomenon. Specifically, the study analysed the mediating effects of the social and institutional embrace of university rankings as a legitimate barometer of quality on the strategic orientation of institutions, as well as on their everyday research and teaching practices in Chilean higher education.

To develop the framework for the study, the conceptual tools offered by Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) were used as an analytical heuristic. CHAT emerged from a sociocultural perspective, as a means of understanding interactions and relationships in socially formed activity (Englund et al., 2018). It has been used as a conceptual framework in a broad range of educational research that seeks to understand the mediating effect of historically located activity systems on everyday educational practices (Darwin, 2011). CHAT offers several compelling foundations for this form of research providing a means to respond to the research focus, allowing:

• analysis of seemingly disparate social practices around the mediating effect of multi-levelled university rankings, offering a robust conceptual framework that explores how such input can shape the social perspectives of systems, institutions and local practices;

• making explicit the inherent tensions and contradictory imperatives generated by global and local forms of university rankings, and their implications for shared academic practices;

• observation of the role and potential of the ranking criteria to influence (either positively or negatively) historically adopted cultural practices in university settings; and

• illumination of the expansive developmental potential of tensions and contradictions inherent in university rankings, to broaden and enhance understanding of potential alternative formations.

(adapted from Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006; Young, 2001)

This qualitative study was designed using a multiple-case design (Yin, 1994) as a means of generating data. It was believed this more complex approach would prove most effective in demonstrating the differing tensions and contradictions emerging around the growing influence of rankings in framing conceptions of quality across different types of institutions in the Chilean higher education system. The data for the research was derived from a purposive sample developed through an institutional typology based on a range of institutional forms and factors identified relevant to the research question (i.e., high-medium-low ranked; urban-regional; large-medium-small institutions; public-benevolent-private). A group of 24 institutions were initially identified as potential participants, and of these, 18 institutions agreed to engage in the study based on a process of informed consent. The data for the research was generated by a series of semi-structured interviews with institutional educational leaders (normally the academic head of teaching or research). These interviews focused on how institutions viewed rankings, how they understood their relationship to teaching and research quality, responses taken within institutions and perceptions of the social impact of rankings on social and student perceptions of institutional quality. In addition, a sequential artefact analysis was also used to provide additional data. This artefact analysis involved interrogation of publicly available documents, marketing and media statements made by participating institutions regarding regionalised localised rankings. This first stage was also used to inform the framing of semi-structured interviews to bring greater local relevance and depth to the analysis. In the second stage, institutions were also asked to provide other material (beyond that already identified) that may shed further light on their institutional orientation to rankings. To analyse the data, the conceptual tools offered by CHAT were used as a heuristic to identify the mediating factors identified by institutions and how these mediating elements acted differently in the diverse types of institutions included in the sample. In addition, the nature of the contradictions generated between institutional and systematic conceptions of quality, and the effect of rankings in shaping such conceptions. Further, CHAT was used to understand what effects rankings were having on institutional expectations of teaching and research (rules), the impact on institutional academic relationships (community) and changes that had emerged in the role expectations of different institutional actors in response to ranking demands (division of labour).

Research outcomes demonstrate strong emerging tensions across institutions—largely regardless of type—around the disruptive social and institutional effect of regionally applied global rankings on conceptions of institutional quality. This effect was seen largely because of the high levels of annual visibility of ranking releases in local media, their use of 'league tables' of rising and falling institutions and reductive forms of numeric data, all of which created a potent and seductive form of assessment. As a result, such rankings were increasing displacing more traditional forms of quality assessment, most notably institutional accreditation by government and local rankings system centred on more tailored factors that more authentically guided student choice. Although this tension was identified as universal, how institutions responded tended to significantly differ. Those institutions that were more highly ranked in the regional global rankings demonstrated stronger responsiveness and embrace of their outcomes. As most of these institutions tended to aspire to greater international recognition, with the value of rankings outcomes celebrated and internal systems being gradually reshaped to respond to key rankings indicators. However, in these institutions, scepticism was also omnipresent about the value of rankings, with continuing deference to the more traditional measures of quality (such as accreditation). Institutions not as highly ranked tended to select and foreground elements of success within rankings metrics and tended to use these more aggressively in such things as internal and external marketing. At the same time, they tended to devalue rankings as a legitimate arbiter of quality, tending to foreground institutional mission and social contribution as more significant than the assessment of global metrics. Lower-ranked institutions generally rejected the relevance of rankings and stressed the value of more local assessments of quality (such as student evaluation and local community regard).

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