Attempting to imagine the unimaginable: a decolonial reading of global university rankings (GURs) (original) (raw)

This article presents a collaboration among critical scholars of color grappling with the challenges of re-imagining global university rankings (GURs) in an effort to rethink the field of comparative education from a decolonial perspective. We start with an empathetic review of scholarship on rankings. This effort evidenced that rankings are embedded and sustained within a broader dominant imaginary of higher education, circumscribed by what is deemed possible and desirable within modern institutions. Seeking inspiration to explore beyond the current limits of our modern imagination, we turned to the teachings of the Dagara, as a mirror that cast a different light on our investments in the very onto-epistemic structures that sustain the GURs. Being taught by Dagara’s teachings led us to realize that rankings are symptomatic of a much broader crisis shaking the ontological securities of modern institutions and that it is only through the loss of our satisfaction with these securities that we can start to imagine otherwise.