British Journal of Sociology of Education

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Global competition, coloniality, and the geopolitics

of knowledge in higher education

Riyad A. Shahjahan & Clara Morgan

To cite this article: Riyad A. Shahjahan & Clara Morgan (2016) Global competition, coloniality, and
the geopolitics of knowledge in higher education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37:1,
92-109, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2015.1095635

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British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2016
Vol. 37, No. 1, 92–109, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2015.1095635

Global competition, coloniality, and the geopolitics of knowledge

in higher education
Riyad A. Shahjahana* and Clara Morganb
a
Department of Education Administration, Michigan State University, East Lansing,
MI, USA; bDepartment of Political Science, UAE University, Al Ain, UAE
(Received 7 February 2015; final version received 14 September 2015)

While scholars have analyzed global higher education (HE) competition,

they have largely failed to address how global spaces of equivalence are
tied both to coloniality and to competition. Using the OECD’s
International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes
(AHELO) as a case study and drawing on concepts from coloniality
including Fanon’s zone of being/non-being and Mignolo’s geopolitics of
knowledge, we reveal how coloniality underpins the desire for global
spaces of equivalence through: the desire for opportunity and belonging;
and the desire for recognition and pride. We illuminate how the nature
of global competition is not simply tied to market-based economic or
political rationalities, but also operates under psychosocial dimensions
interlinked with belonging in the international community. We argue that
AHELO represents the mediation and internalization of a HE
competition focused on teaching and learning, which reproduces
coloniality by valuing characteristics of the enterprising, globally
competitive institution.
Keywords: coloniality; global competition; higher education; teaching
and learning; OECD; quality assurance

Introduction
Although scholars have critically examined how global higher education
(HE) is trapped in a competition fetish (Cantwell and Kauppinen 2014;
Hazelkorn 2009; King, Marginson, and Naidoo 2011; Portnoi, Rust, and
Bagley 2010), the ways in which global spaces of equivalence are tied to
coloniality and competition in HE remain largely unaddressed. By global
spaces of equivalence, we wish to describe socially constructed ‘commensu-
rate spaces of comparison’ or ‘spaces of uniform measurement’ (Rizvi and
Lingard 2010, 134) that allow a large number of events to be recorded and
summarized according to standard norms (Desrosières 1998). These spaces

*Corresponding author. Email: shahja95@msu.edu

© 2015 Taylor & Francis
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 93

of equivalence are universalized, delocalized, and depoliticized so that they

are seen as legitimate comparative measures. Common global spaces of
equivalence include global rankings (Times Higher Education or Shanghai
Jia Tong) and/or educational indicators (e.g. OECD’s ‘Education at a
Glance’).
The intensification of the struggle for positional advantage in the global
economy, the enhanced global mobility of research and development, and
the competition for highly skilled knowledge workers have contributed to
fierce competition within and between national systems of HE (Naidoo
2014; Portnoi, Rust, and Bagley 2010). This competition fetish is also char-
acterized by ‘combined and uneven development’ among HE systems that
are ‘stratified into elite high quality higher education and low quality mass
produced education’ (Naidoo 2014, 4–5). Some have argued that we need
to engage in a defetishing critique of HE measures, and suggest that we
need to foreground the material conditions under which this competition has
been produced (Naidoo 2014).
While this type of HE competition has been characterized by performa-
tivity and market criteria (Bagley and Portnoi 2014; Ball 1998, 2000), we
reveal how coloniality underpins the desire for global spaces of equivalence
among participants in the global HE community. The global competition
debate has focused less on understanding the role that coloniality plays in
constructing and sustaining the competition fetish (a recent exception is
Ramírez 2014). We link concepts of coloniality, which include Fanon’s
zones of being/non-being, with Mignolo’s geopolitics of knowledge. By
coloniality, we mean the enduring logic of domination that ‘enforces con-
trol, domination, and exploitation disguised in the language of salvation,
progress and being good for everyone’; this logic is largely enacted by
dominant players on minoritized/peripheral groups (Mignolo 2005, 6). Colo-
niality is about ‘long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of
colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and
knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administra-
tions’ (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 243). The competition fetish contributes to
the construction of coloniality through the ‘modern magical belief … that
competition will provide the god like solution to all the unsolved problems
of higher education, that competition will protect us against risk and that
competition will give us a better life’ (Naidoo 2014, 3).
We contribute to the global competition debate by analyzing how the
competition fetish is constructed and shaped. We use the OECD’s Interna-
tional Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) initia-
tive as a case study to highlight how coloniality is reproduced as part and
parcel of this competition through the desires for a global space of equiva-
lence. While a few scholars have critically examined the AHELO study
(Ewell 2012; Shahjahan 2013; Shahjahan, Morgan, and Nguyen 2015;
Shahjahan and Torres 2013), they have not yet addressed how AHELO as a
94 R.A. Shahjahan and C. Morgan

global space of equivalence is tied to competitive logics. Even though

AHELO has recently been shelved because of OECD members’ priorities
(Jani Ursin, personal communication, 15 February 2014),1 it remains an
important entry point to understanding the processes by which a new type
of competition focused on teaching and learning is constructed, circulated,
and internalized by various players in the transnational HE arena.
Our analysis shows how the competition logic manifests among various
players in global HE (e.g. higher education institutions [HEIs], nation-states,
and experts) by considering first how international organizations like the
OECD work to develop spaces of equivalence across very different geo-
graphic, political, and psychosocial contexts, and how they become integral
to reproducing a kind of competition that furthers economic interests. More
specifically, we show how this competition privileges and valorizes tem-
plates that derive from historically epistemically privileged positions (i.e.
globally competitive HE institutional models and discourse of learning out-
comes). These templates portray the characteristics exhibited by the enter-
prising, globally competitive institution (Marginson and Considine 2000)
such as benchmarking and quality assurance practices, creating a globally
competitive workforce, and producing credentialed mobile graduates to gain
global status. Peripheral nations have to mimic the characteristics inscribed
within the AHELO model, which in turn are based on powerful institutions
in the most powerful nations, to enter the competition even if they have no
chance of winning.
We illuminate how the nature of global competition is not simply tied to
market-based economic or political rationalities, but also operates under
psychosocial dimensions interlinked with belonging in the international
community. This dimension, we argue, which is often ignored by scholars
and policy-makers, is nevertheless an integral motor in the reproduction of
coloniality. The seduction of achieving worthiness and belonging in the
dominant strata of the global community becomes in itself a competition to
leave the periphery and belong. Drawing on the work of Fanon helps us
understand why HEIs, nation-states, faculty, and students, particularly from
zones that are marginalized, nevertheless willingly join this academic
olympiad.
In this article, we first situate the theoretical approach we use to frame
and analyze the competition fetish within AHELO. We next explain why
the OECD’s AHELO is an apt case study. Drawing on texts and interviews
with key informants from AHELO, we next highlight how coloniality
underpins the desire for global spaces of equivalences in HE among various
players, highlighting their dual desires for opportunity and for recognition.
We argue that AHELO represents the mediation and internalization of a HE
competition fetish, which reproduces coloniality in valuing the characteris-
tics exhibited by the enterprising, globally competitive institution. We con-
clude by suggesting that a coloniality lens helps reveal the psychosocial and
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 95

transhistorical colonial conditions that construct and perpetuate the

competition fetish in HE.

Decolonial framework
Our theoretical approach to unveiling coloniality is decolonial thought. A
decolonial framework is an epistemic, ethical, political, and pedagogical
project that involves the denaturalization of modern civilizational cosmol-
ogy, and the inclusion of non-modern systems of knowledge and categories
of thought (Grosfoguel 2008; Mignolo 2011). Like other decolonial theo-
rists, we presume that coloniality and modernity are constitutive of each
other: there is no modernity without coloniality. Decolonial thought
‘delinks’ itself from western and universalizing epistemologies by being
‘epistemically disobedient’ (Mignolo 2011, 209). We link Frantz Fanon’s
zones of being and non-being with Walter Mignolo’s concept of geopolitics
of knowledge to analyze how and why HE players come to desire a global
space of equivalence. We illuminate how global spaces of equivalence are
integral to the reproduction of a certain type of competition.
Walter Mignolo’s (2005, 2011) geopolitics of knowledge – a subset of
coloniality – highlights how all knowledge systems (here, HE) originate in
geographic and social contexts, and are situated within power relations that
are historically and transnationally constituted. Mignolo notes that ‘local
histories are everywhere but … only some local histories are in a position
of imagining and implementing global designs’ (Mignolo in Delgado and
Romero 2000, 8). In this sense, HE reproduces coloniality (see Grosfoguel
2013; Mignolo 2003). As Grosfoguel puts it:

After 500 years of coloniality of knowledge there is no cultural nor epistemic

tradition in an absolute sense outside to Eurocentered modernity. All were
affected by Eurocentered modernity and even aspects of Eurocentrism were
also internalized in many of these epistemologies. (2013, 87)

The geopolitics of knowledge privileges knowledge systems that are consid-

ered universal, delocalized, and applied without question in all contexts. In
terms of policy analysis, this means that only certain local knowledge sys-
tems, always already derivatives of particular historical-material conditions
(and even backed by military power), have the social privilege to shape glo-
bal thinking. In HE, this manifests in policy tools and designs. AHELO
embodies a quality assurance culture derived from Anglo-European
knowledge systems, which becomes a global template in the geopolitics of
knowledge (Lewis 2009; Shahjahan 2013).
Global competition in HE reflects a desire to adopt tools and templates
from enterprising, globally competitive HEIs that act as benchmarks, repro-
ducing a competitive geopolitics of knowledge (Mignolo 2003). These tools
96 R.A. Shahjahan and C. Morgan

include institutional, curricular, and pedagogical templates. For instance,

many countries – including Thailand, China, Qatar, and India – are mimick-
ing US versions of community colleges (Raby and Valeau 2012). China is
increasingly adopting American curricula templates to reorient its liberal arts
learning agendas toward the knowledge economy (Fischer 2012), and active
learning pedagogical templates have migrated to the Middle East (see Jor-
dan et al. 2014). While a diversity of HEIs and approaches persist, the
migration of templates abroad privileges the ‘science universities and scien-
tific knowledge in the Anglo-American tradition tower above everything
else’ (Marginson 2010, 37). Marginson argues that global rankings, as well,
‘… elevate not just Anglo-American Knowledge but the institutional mis-
sions, habits, and assumptions of the leading Anglo-American universities’
(2010, 37).
In our view, this enterprising, globally competitive institution has certain
distinguishing characteristics such as: the commodification and marketiza-
tion of education; increased interaction with business; an audit and account-
ability culture; and the adoption of quality assurance practices for
measuring performance (Ball 2000; Marginson and Considine 2000;
Marginson and Wende 2009). Marginson and Wende note that ‘the most
striking vertical difference in the [higher education] global landscape is the
special and hegemonic role played by … American higher education, led by
powerful American doctoral sector’ (2009, 34). King (2009) indicates that
Americanized global templates which enfold concepts such as autonomy,
competition, and markets are transmitted and assimilated across the globe,
even if the ways they are taken up are influenced by context (Ong 2006).
These dominant policy templates stem from and encompass neoliberal logic
(Torres 2008), Euro-American centrism, and secular notions of progress/de-
velopment. In HE, the enterprising, globally competitive institutional model
has taken root across the globe, and its reach is extended through the export
of English language, curriculum, global rankings, and so on (Grosfoguel
2013; Marginson and Wende 2009; Mignolo 2003, 2005). As Mignolo
notes, HE is an important motor of the new face of global coloniality:

A new facet of coloniality manifests itself in the turn that higher education is
taking in both developed and emerging countries. Historically, Italy and the
Iberian Peninsula provided the model of the Renaissance university, while
Germany and France provided the model of the Enlightenment university, in
the tradition of Immanuel Kant and Alexander von Humboldt. Today it is the
United States that is mainly leading the way in the transformation of the latter
model into that of the corporate university. (2003, 101)

We link the geopolitics of knowledge to Fanon’s (1967) notion of zones of

being/non-being. Fanon’s concepts are central to our analysis because they
add a psychosocial dimension to the global competition in HE. Fanon con-
ceived of racism as a global hierarchy of superiority and inferiority along
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 97

the ‘line of the human’ that has been politically, economically, and cultur-
ally produced and reproduced during the centuries by the modern/colonial
world system. People above the line of the human are in what Fanon calls
the zone of being, and the humanity of these people is socially recognized
through human, social, civil, and labor rights. Those people in the zone of
non-being are considered sub-human or non-human; their humanity is not
socially recognized and thrown into question. According to Fanon, those in
the zone of non-being are forced to emulate those in the zone of being, just
to be or belong, which, in turn, legitimates the being-ness of those in the
zone of being. Reflecting on the plight of the black Malagasy, Fanon stated:

I begin to suffer from not being a white man to the degree that the white man
imposes discrimination on me, makes a colonized native, robs me of all worth
…, tells me … that I must bring myself as quickly as possible into step with
the white world … Then I will quite simply try to make myself white: that is,
I will compel the white man to acknowledge that I am human. (1967, 98)

Fanon centers the psychosocial impact of coloniality, noting: ‘The feeling of

inferiority of the colonized is correlative to the European’s feeling of superi-
ority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: it is the racist who creates
the inferior’ (1967, 93). The category of the human necessarily relies on
and reproduces its others: sub-humans and non-humans.
Fanon’s zone of being provides a starting point to unpack the psycholog-
ical dimensions underlying core–periphery relationships in global HE and
extends our analysis beyond structural political economy models. Global
HE relies on a similar line of demarcation that creates zones of being and
non-being. Within the geopolitics of knowledge, those who occupy zones of
being have the epistemic privilege to articulate global designs. Peripheral
players in HE (whether between countries, or within countries, or HEIs) –
those from the zone of non-being – fetishize ‘higher education’ as a com-
modity, and emulate dominant global designs in order to be ‘acknowledged’
as a player in the global knowledge economy (see also Ramírez 2014). It is
important to note that these zones of being do not map neatly on to national
containers, but also comprise privileged institutions within peripheral zones
such as the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Within this theoreti-
cal frame, the next sections introduce AHELO as an illustrative example of
the politics of coloniality and global competition in HE.

The OECD’s AHELO as a global space of equivalence

Through its data collection tools, the OECD develops global spaces of
equivalence through which nation-states measure themselves by benchmarks
aligned with particular policy outcomes (Morgan and Shahjahan 2014). The
indicator work of the OECD, published annually as ‘Education at a Glance,’
98 R.A. Shahjahan and C. Morgan

is an important space of equivalence (Shahjahan 2012). The OECD also

produces indicators – such as the Programme for International Student
Assessment – against which countries evaluate student performance
(Morgan 2009). The OECD also collates comparative data on adult literacy
through its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competen-
cies. National governments rely on these data collection tools because they
are assumed to be reliable and valid proxies for measuring their stock of
human capital and their economic competitiveness across contexts (see
Morris 2015; Novoa and Yariv-Mashal 2003; Shahjahan 2013). As a data
collection tool, AHELO is considered by many as another useful and reli-
able proxy for measuring the quality of student learning in HEIs (Morgan
and Shahjahan 2014) while also legitimizing the connections the OECD
makes among the ‘quality’ of HE, competition in the knowledge economy,
and economic performance (Shahjahan and Torres 2013).
OECD policy-makers construct a crisis discourse that links the problem
of quality in HE to the massification of HE. This discourse is framed in
terms of the broader participation of students in HEIs, the emergence of
new types of educational institutions and educational delivery, the diversity
of educational programs, the marketization of education, and the growing
pressures on costs and financing (OECD 2012). Such trends raise questions
for OECD policy-makers about whether a HE degree has symbolic value or
relevance. Policy-makers aim to manage this crisis of credentialism, while
at the same time remaining concerned about the quality of graduates pro-
duced within their HEIs (Côté and Allahar 2007). Recently, teaching and
learning have come under global scrutiny (OECD 2012). Notwithstanding a
few critical scholars (Bagley and Portnoi 2014; Ntshoe and Letseka 2010;
Ramírez 2014), researchers insufficiently examined how global competition
manifests in quality assurance mechanisms for teaching and learning in HE.
Amid the global debate about quality assurance in HE, the OECD
recently completed an AHELO feasibility study. AHELO constituted a con-
troversial attempt to assess teaching and learning across global HEIs using
an international standardized test that measured teaching and learning out-
comes (Ewell 2012). AHELO was a landmark in international HE assess-
ment development because its ‘scope and intent were pioneering in many
ways. It built on significant advances in efforts to map, categorise and
define higher education outcomes’ (Richardson and Coates 2014, 2) and
represented ‘the largest, most comprehensive assessment of universities yet
devised’ globally (OECD 2010a, 4). Even though AHELO has recently
been put on the back burner, educational quality issues continue to inform
the OECD education agenda. As Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education
and Skills at the OECD, noted in a 2013 presentation to the OECD’s
Education Policy Committee, ‘There was a time when the public turned to
[the] university to judge the quality of education … now the public looks
for data to judge the quality of universities’ (Schleicher 2013). Schleicher
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 99

(2013) recommended continued development work on AHELO to the

Education Policy Committee given that AHELO was found to be feasible.
Meanwhile, AHELO’s core premise and underlying rationality contribute to
the perpetuation of the competition fetish.
AHELO was introduced to address global policy questions about how to
effectively measure and improve the quality of teaching and learning across
diverse institutional, cultural, and geographic contexts (Stensaker and
Harvey 2011). AHELO assesses the skills and capacities of undergraduate
students in 17 countries as they approach the end of their initial three-year
or four-year degree. It evaluates their generic skills and knowledge in two
disciplines: economics and engineering (Ewell 2012). According to the
OECD, the AHELO feasibility study helps create ‘measures that would be
valid for all cultures and languages’ (2011, 5) as well as across a range of
universities and institutional missions. The assessment is comprised of four
instruments administered to students that test: generic skills; disciplinary
knowledge in economics and engineering; contextual information; and a
value-added strand (for further details about AHELO, see OECD 2012,
2013). According to some, AHELO was significant because it laid the
‘foundation stones for future cross-national assessments’ (Richardson and
Coates 2014, 8). In its implementation, AHELO laid the foundation for
future initiatives that value generic skills development in universities and
for the development of competencies valued by potential employers. It also
legitimized the importance of measuring learning outcomes (Schleicher
2013).
To examine the politics and consequences of AHELO in a coloniality
frame and its ties to competitive logics, we critically examine publicly avail-
able AHELO texts such as the OECD’s AHELO website, promotional mate-
rial, and declassified documents available on the website. The latter includes
AHELO working papers, meeting minutes, seminar presentations, progress
reports, newsletters, and interviews with various stakeholders. These docu-
ments are a rich source of qualitative data for understanding various play-
ers’ desires for a global space of equivalence and rationales for participating
in AHELO (Merriam 1998). In addition to the aforementioned documents,
we also analyze interviews with 15 key informants (i.e. three Group of
National Experts/national project managers, three OECD secretariat staff,
four technical experts/contractors, and five US state/faculty/institutional
coordinators)2 that capture their perspectives about the challenges and
possibilities of the AHELO feasibility study.
In the following analytic sections, we demonstrate how AHELO is a pro-
ject infused with desires to ‘belong’ in global HE, which in turn perpetuates
competitive logics rooted in the effective production of a globally competi-
tive labor force, credential mobility, and accountability practices. We reveal
how these desires and sense of belonging are tied to opportunity,
recognition, and pride.
100 R.A. Shahjahan and C. Morgan

Various desires for a global space of equivalence

As noted earlier, we link Fanon’s zones of being and non-being with
Mignolo’s geopolitics of knowledge to analyze why various players ‘desire’
global spaces of equivalence and how their desires are related to belonging
and emulating dominant institutional types and knowledge systems in the
global HE community. We share two themes: the desire for opportunity;
and the desire for recognition and pride.

The desire for an opportunity to belong

The desire for the opportunity to belong prevailed among AHELO partici-
pants. AHELO actors desired opportunities to benchmark, to create a glob-
ally competitive workforce, to produce credentialed and mobile graduates,
and to create a culture of quality assurance. To shed light on the manifesta-
tion of the desire for opportunities and global status, we draw on a geopoli-
tics of knowledge lens to unearth the ‘geopolitical configuration of the
world’ (Mignolo 2011, 118). In this configuration, peripheral actors in the
zone of non-being are epistemically dependent on dominant western or
Anglicized knowledge systems. Notably, epistemic dependence is closely
tied to economic dependence historically rooted in coloniality (Mignolo
2005). As Mignolo notes, the history of capitalism ran parallel to the history
of knowledge, which informs the current geopolitics of knowledge:

Asia, Africa, and Latin America became the providers of “natural” resources
to be processed in the countries in which the Industrial Revolution took place
and prospered. These three continents were also placed in the role of
providing information and culture, but not knowledge. (2003, 109)

Speaking from an epistemically privileged position about non-western

regions, a US consultant for AHELO emphasized the ways in which bench-
marking has been taken up as a measure of status in the Global South:

Well, I think they [non-western regions] desperately want to benchmark and

want to be a part of the international community … [T]hey want to be a part
of the international community and to prove their worth and I think it’s …
for them higher education is a matter of economic development in a way that
is more visible and intentional than I think you see in Europe or the US.

In this view, a desire to belong to the international community rests in being

a visible actor in the global knowledge economy and buying into the eco-
nomic enterprise of HE. AHELO, as a global space of equivalence, medi-
ates these desires and reproduces competition that centers on learning
outcomes. The desire for belonging through benchmarking was also evident
among institutional actors. An AHELO contractor noted that institutional
actors participated in AHELO for three main reasons: real interest in global
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 101

benchmarking; external and internal pressures to demonstrate quality in

teaching and learning; and lack of tools to demonstrate quality:

[T]he real desire to be able to benchmark internationally is what drove them

[HEIs]. An interesting thing that we asked the institutions in the survey is if
they would participate in AHELO in the future. And I think every single one
of them said yes.

Another interviewee echoed these sentiments:

The schools that seemed to be most interested in AHELO were schools from
the places with developing higher education systems. And for these schools,
AHELO offered an opportunity to sort of benchmark themselves at least theo-
retically against sort of best in class in the world. And then to probably make
an argument to their Departments of Education and say, ‘listen here our stu-
dents aren’t doing as well as we would like to if we want to be competitive
with you know Britain, France, US, whatever, we need to spend more money
doing this.’

According to our key informants, HEIs are increasingly caught up in the

competition fetish and fulfill their desire to become globally competitive
and to gain global stature – measured against the ‘best in class’ – in the HE
arena by adopting AHELO tools. AHELO, a global template produced by
experts in epistemically privileged positions (see Shahjahan 2013), becomes
a vehicle for internalizing, mediating, and reproducing the globally competi-
tive HEI, and thus the geopolitics of knowledge. In this regard, peripheral
players (either nation-states or HEIs) reinforce the universality of ‘learning
outcomes’ as a means to assert their competitiveness in the global economy.
The competition fetish of HE is internalized and mediated among stake-
holders in various regions of the world in its response to their desires to
compete in the global economy. Comparative logics are instrumental to
responding to global HE competition rooted in credentialism and labor
mobility (Marginson 2010). Many AHELO actors articulated their desires to
produce competitive graduates for the global labor market. For instance, a
Mexican policy-maker, in an interview with the OECD, rationalized
AHELO participation via the logic of ‘improving the quality of graduates’
(OECD 2010b). For Egyptians who participated in all three strands,
AHELO increased ‘awareness of the academic societies regarding the
importance of linking the intended outcomes of programmes with the labour
market’ (OECD 2013, 72). For participants from the Gulf region, it was
important to measure the quality of their graduates destined to work in the
knowledge-based economy (OECD 2013). In this sense, AHELO represents
a ‘catalyst’ for measuring students’ knowledge and skills using a ‘reliable,
multifaceted and internationally valid measure’ (OECD 2013, 40). AHELO
gains legitimacy and reach via peripheral players’ desire for belonging in an
international community and desire to gain epistemic privilege. These
102 R.A. Shahjahan and C. Morgan

desires are symptomatic of the historical marginalization of non-western or

subaltern knowledges (Grosfoguel 2013; Mignolo 2003).
AHELO participants articulated their interest in producing graduates with
credentials and labor mobility. This desire was apparent among participants
in the discipline-specific strands (i.e. engineering and economics) who were
concerned about the validity and mobility of their students’ credentials. For
Japanese representatives, ‘the AHELO feasibility study represented an excit-
ing engagement in an international conversation on what engineering gradu-
ates are expected to know and be able to do in a knowledge based global
society’ (OECD 2013, 91). For Ontario-based actors whose economy stag-
nated in the recent economic crisis, AHELO represented an opportunity to
compare their engineering programs across international contexts. An inter-
viewee emphasized that AHELO’s comparative lens provides an opportunity
to support student mobility and to affirm the international caliber of their
programs. The Canadian section of the AHELO lessons learned report
echoes this perspective:
The institutions noted their interest in taking part in this international
assessment as a way of understanding their own programme, those next
door, and those a world away through a comparative lens … participation
in AHELO offered institutions an opportunity to support mobility by better
understanding the characteristics and knowledge base that exist in other
countries. (OECD 2013, 61)

In several countries, AHELO served as an opportunity to enhance quality

assurance practices. Kuwaitis who participated in the generic skill strands
suggested that AHELO ‘encourage[s] a national culture of assessment’ in
their HE system. For Mexicans, AHELO participation helped improve the
‘quality of education since [AHELO] focuses not just on inputs and pro-
cesses but also on outputs’ (OECD 2013, 113). Colombians framed AHELO
as a chance ‘to take part in a discussion at the highest level about the tech-
nical and practical requirements of a Higher Education assessment’ (OECD
2013, 67). In the Russian context, AHELO developed ‘national strategic
objectives in the quality assurance (QA) area’ which constitutes the creation
of an ‘independent quality assessment system in higher education’ (OECD
2013, 132). Across these perspectives, AHELO is an opportunity for periph-
eral countries to develop and improve their quality assurance practices by
borrowing dominant criteria for measurement of learning outcomes (Ntshoe
and Letseka 2010). Through AHELO as a global space of equivalence tied
to competitive logics, regional actors elevate their peripheral status as they
strive for the opportunity to attain global stature (Ntshoe and Letseka 2010).
Epistemically privileged actors also desired the opportunity to bolster
their quality assurance practices. For example, one US policy-maker con-
ceived of AHELO as an experiment that could produce a ‘culture free
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 103

assessment’ that might resolve national debates about the efficacy of HE

assessment:

I was very interested in seeing if we could find an instrument that in fact

could be used across multiple cultures and be a reasonable assessment of that,
really from the perspective of the, you know, 90 year history of the United
States trying to find a culture free assessment. … [I]f we actually had [an]
assessment that could cut across Kuwait, Korea and the United States that
would be a major … win for us. [It] would give me a little more confidence
in our assessments being a little more independent of culture.

This reflects the desire for a holy grail of ‘culture-free’ assessment. Unlike
actors that articulate desires for opportunities to produce a globally competi-
tive workforce or for alignment with the global knowledge economy, this
actor desires objective measures for the production of evidence that might
put to rest questions about the cultural contingency of HE measures. As an
‘experiment,’ AHELO is infused with the hope that discourses within
national containers might be regulated (Shahjahan and Kezar 2013). Simi-
larly, in the Slovak Republic, AHELO became a tool to address domestic
debates on quality assurance. As the country report indicated, ‘the AHELO
feasibility study represented a light at the end of the tunnel in the endless
debates on the quality of Slovak higher education’ (OECD 2013, 140). Our
analysis demonstrates how the desire for benchmarking, for a globally com-
petitive workforce, for credential mobility, and for quality assurance practices
is linked with the desire to emulate the enterprising and globally competitive
HEI, which in turn reproduces the geopolitics of knowledge. We now con-
sider the desire for recognition and pride as it operates in global HE arenas.

The desire for recognition and pride

The desire for belonging is bound up with a desire for recognition and pride
which perpetuates global competition in HE. AHELO’s comparative lens
enables peripheral actors opportunities for recognition as they adopt the cri-
teria of the enterprising HEI. Indeed, pride was an important driver of par-
ticipation in AHELO.
Peripheral HE actors desire to be acknowledged, and strive for recogni-
tion as legitimate producers of educated, competent, and workforce-ready
students. Adoption of AHELO’s quality assurance practices can bring these
desires to fruition. For example, the Egyptian National Project Manager sug-
gested that participation in AHELO contributed to ‘improving Egypt’s com-
petitiveness in the global knowledge-based economy’ (OECD 2013, 73).
For Kuwait, AHELO was a measure that could bolster students’ applications
to graduate and postgraduate study programs abroad, independent of a pro-
gram’s accreditation. Kuwaitis noted that AHELO provides ‘educational
legitimacy and credibility’ (Private Universities Council 2013). AHELO is
104 R.A. Shahjahan and C. Morgan

constructed as an independent measure of worthiness that affirms the quality

of teaching and learning within institutions situated in the zone of non-be-
ing. In addition, Kuwaitis indicated that AHELO ‘encourages students’
equal participation in the production of knowledge’ (Private Universities
Council 2013). As a global space of equivalence, AHELO objectively vali-
dates knowledge produced in peripheral HEIs, rendering it commensurable
with knowledge produced by globally competitive HEIs.
For Egyptians, AHELO fulfilled a desire for recognition and pride. Amid
the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Egypt was in political and economic tur-
moil during the AHELO feasibility study. In addition to affirming their
place as a HE player on the global stage, AHELO offered Egyptians a
chance to demonstrate their capacity to attain western democratic ideals that
value transparency. Participating in the AHELO feasibility study was a mar-
ker of national pride and reflected the ‘national governmental commitment
and support cornerstones for assuring success’ (OECD 2013, 72):

In light of the inspiring 25th of January revolution, the Egyptian people have
expressed their desire for more effective reform as well as greater expecta-
tions for better quality of service in all aspects of life, particularly education.
The new era of democracy and transparency is in harmony with concepts
such as self-assessment and the developments that a ground-breaking reform
project like AHELO targets. (OECD 2013, 72)

Egyptian students also succumbed to AHELO as a marker of national pride.

While Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Korea, Netherlands, Norway,
Slovak Republic, and the USA struggled with low student participation
rates, Egypt had one of the highest student participation rates. The Egyptian
example became a cornerstone of a triumphal AHELO narrative espoused
by many of our key informants. As one interviewee put it:

… [W]e had some amazing stories about Egypt, for example. There were
riots going on and they would be able to get their students to the testing site
in all types of surreptitious ways and they got near 100% cooperation.

Another interviewee stated:

[T]hey have the feeling that they have to prove what they are doing. And that
was in Egypt, for example. Even students wanted to show that they could
compare well to other countries. They need to know where they stand.

In a time of crisis, Egyptian players sought self-worth in a commensurable

space that affirmed their worthiness as learners and producers of knowledge:
‘Even though most countries don’t believe in rankings, they need to know
where they stand but they need to know why they stand there.’
The Egyptian case is one example among many where AHELO became
tied into narratives of national pride. As one AHELO contractor pointed out:
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 105

… countries … like Colombia, you know an up and coming country. The

idea that they would have the opportunity to participate in an international
OECD study was really a great opportunity. So the same could be said for
Russia and Egypt, these are the kinds of institutions that would never get the
opportunity to do this kind of thing. […] And what was interesting is that
they all put it up on their website. They were really proud. So that means in
those up and coming sort of countries became a big issue.

In this sense, AHELO is a project through which those from zones of non-
being in HE can finally be players in global HE. In generating a desire for
recognition and pride, a global space of equivalence like AHELO becomes
a conduit for commensuration that is tied to competitive logics. In stoking
such desires, AHELO also reproduces the competition fetish that gets
constructed, mediated, and internalized as new players join an ‘academic
olympiad’ (Spring 2008) that reproduces the geopolitics of knowledge.

Conclusion
Drawing on Mignolo’s geopolitics of knowledge and Fanon’s of zones of
being/non-being, we demonstrated how AHELO, as a global space of equiv-
alence, represents the mediation and internalization of a HE competition fet-
ish, which reproduces the coloniality that underlies the enterprising, globally
competitive HEI. In conclusion, we suggest that a coloniality lens helps
reveal the psychosocial and transhistorical colonial conditions that construct
and perpetuate the competition fetish in HE. Based on the AHELO case
study, our analysis raises important questions about the nature and criteria
of global competition in HE.
First, this form of competition privileges and valorizes templates that
derive from historically epistemically privileged positions (i.e. globally com-
petitive HEI models and discourse of learning outcomes) and focuses atten-
tion on easily measurable teaching and learning outputs, rather than
research outputs. While quality assurance has become a key arena in which
global competition is being played out, we suggest that these measures and
criteria of quality are derived from knowledge systems rooted in zones of
being and epistemically privileged locations, rendering them, in some cases,
irrelevant to local or regional contexts (see Ntshoe and Letseka 2010; Ramí-
rez 2014). As we highlighted in our analysis, the fetishized prizes of this
Olympiad are primarily: a globally competitive labor force, credential
mobility, and accountability practices. Global spaces of equivalence like
AHELO stir HEIs to value instrumental or vocational learning (e.g. eco-
nomics/engineering) and generic skills rather than social justice-based or
transformative learning. As players emulate the enterprising, globally
competitive HEI, the civic nature of learning is lost.
Second, the nature of global competition is not simply tied to
market-based economic or political rationalities, but also operates under
106 R.A. Shahjahan and C. Morgan

psychosocial dimensions interlinked with belonging in the international

community. The seduction of achieving worthiness and belonging in the
global community belies the importance of centering psychoanalytic per-
spectives on why and how HEIs, nation-states, faculty, and students, partic-
ularly from zones of non-being, willingly join this academic olympiad.
Psychoanalytical perspectives can also offer a nuanced understanding of the
motivations and actions of players from zones of being who are implicated
in the global competition of HE.
Third, a coloniality lens bolsters our analysis of inequalities within the
HE global competition arena. It highlights the fact that countries and HEIs
‘start … from a different geopolitical position; in other words, the playing
field is not level’ (Bagley and Portnoi 2014, 8). Do HEIs across geographic
space have a legitimate chance at winning the zero-sum game of global
competition with players from the zone of being (see Portnoi, Rust, and
Bagley 2010; Ramírez 2014)? The competition fetish maintains the gap
between those in the zones of being and non-being and reproduces the cur-
rent structure of geopolitics of knowledge, even as it produces feelings of
belonging.
It is our hope that close analysis of the colonial logics that underpin the
competition fetish in HE may help incorporate multiple, historical minor
stories into the global narrative of HE. Future research might examine how
to delink colonial relations and the competition fetish from HE to make
space for more diverse perspectives on what kind of knowledge is valuable.
Some examples of such a reconfiguration lie in autonomous indigenous
HEIs that are charged with preserving traditional languages and cultures,
promoting local economic development, and fostering political autonomy –
such as tribal colleges in the United States, First Nations University in
Canada, Te Wananga o Aoteraoa in New Zealand, or Sami University Col-
lege in Norway, to name a few examples (Barnhardt 1991; Cole 2011).
Future research documenting the innovative programs and practices that are
advancing indigenous students’ learning and indigenous worldviews would
provide valuable lessons for both indigenous peoples and non-indigenous
peoples seeking to construct an educational alternative to the dominant,
mainstream, western-style institutional models.
HE actors (e.g. policy-makers, HEIs, academics, and students) should be
wary of wholesale borrowing from foreign templates and knowledge sys-
tems in response to the seductive competition fetish. Uncritical adoption of
such tools reproduces coloniality and the geopolitics of knowledge, and
engenders a kind of epistemic suicide (Grosfoguel 2013). The competition
for global status and belonging in a global HE system structured by
coloniality ultimately damages our self-worth and obliterates the diversity of
knowledge and perspectives that are crucial to a healthy global HE system.
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 107

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes
1. Jani Ursin was the Finnish National Project Manager and also a member of the
General National Experts group in AHELO.
2. Some of our interview participants requested anonymity while others did not.
In order to be consistent, we have anonymized all interviewees quoted in this
article.

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