Transparency, Quality and Accountability.

With the increasing globalisation of the higher education sector and growing competition for talent and resources, higher education institutions are under greater pressure to perform well in a worldwide ‘reputation race’. There is particular emphasis on their placement in global university league tables, all of which reflect an implicit assumption that there is only one acceptable model of excellence – the large, research-intensive university. There are concerns that league tables (or the desire to certain league table positions) influence policy and funding decisions that result in increased stratification and the neglect of key, non-research, areas of activity such as teaching. This chapter examines the current transparency tools and the literature on classification and rankings to work out the implications for the design of the transparency tool presented in Part II.