Escaping the Data Cage:The Ranking Resistance Movement in American Higher Education
Since the birth of the"U.S.News&World Report"rankings in the 1980s as a popular college choice information service sweeping across America,it has established rankocracy due to its ability to exert an increasingly reinforcing"self-fulfilling prophecy"social reactivity mechanism on universities.This competitive ranking has fostered a"logic of quantification"in pursuit of superficial data enhancement,permeating university organizational culture and trapping universities in a"data cage".This situation creates endless management disturbances,anxiety,and moral burdens for universities.University administrators have continuously criticized this system and launched three rounds of ranking resistance movement,but have failed to end the rankocracy.The reason is that these criticisms and resistances are mostly limited to"symbolic resistance"of declaring its anti-ranking stances.They have been neutralized by the U.S.News'invisible punishments,strategic adjustments,and co-optation strategies.Consequently,the resistance movements have inadvertently produced a more refined ranking disciplinary power,becoming an inescapable cage for American universities.
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