Comparative Analysis of the Strategic Positioning and Shifting Globalization Among World-сlass Universities

The contemporary reality of the global field of higher education is constantly shifting and evolving with respect to political, economic, social, and cultural needs and changes. With the existing trend of the shift towards patterns of globalisation in all fields, it is only evident that the same can be implied in the field of international higher education. A new realm, driven by such factors of institutional change as internationalisation and isomorphism, is thus being shaped. This new realm of the aforementioned field acts as a driver of globalisation and structurisation of the field. This research suggests that such dynamics act as a driver for the rise of legitimisation of the field as a key actor in the realm of international relations via the trends of agenda-setting, research and development initiatives, and formation of universal values on the global scale. Besides, the trends of globalisation serve as the driver of global competition and regional cooperation, and vice-versa, promoting structurisation even further. This added structure serves as a basis for key global political actors such as states, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations to promote universities as valuable partners in global political processes, letting institutions of higher education set agendas, promote values, and propose policies, which creates legitimisation of them as universally accepted key players in international relations. The analysis of the globalisation of universities within the field will be undertaken by data sampling of universities for the research, using the three most respected ranking agencies: TIMES, QS, and ARWU; then, the Strategic Plans of these universities would be analysed via the content analysis methodology, and then using a coordinate map to place universities in an easily comprehensible manner, to compare and contrast the overall trends in the strategies of chosen universities and analyse the globalising patterns in their agendas and policies. Besides that, this research suggests that not only the analysis of the universities within the global educational field provides an explanation to the shifting patterns of globalisation in international politics due to their role in formulating agendas and policies, but that all outcomes of the analysis of strategies of universities themselves might be upscaled and implied onto the international relations arena by assuming the outcomes as universally applicable to any actors within any field, e.g., analysing the behaviour of a state on the basis of its universities or analysing the international arena and relations within it on the basis of relations of actors within the global higher education field. This research implies that all of its findings and hypotheses prove the relevancy and evolution of such trend in liberal political discourse as the complex global interdependence, enhancing its theoretical value and empirical analysis implications.