Multiple Competition? An Analysis of Thematic Research Clusters on Competition and Higher Education

Competition in higher education is widespread. Its prevalence is accompanied by increasing interrelations between different competitions. This article systematically analyses the as yet underexplored intellectual structure of the international scholarly discussion on competition in higher education, including its relation to science and industry, based on a combination of bibliometric coupling and qualitative content analysis using a database of 2136 articles. We find evidence for a heterarchical intellectual structure dominated by six thematic clusters: ‘global organizational status competition’, ‘innovation and university-industry linkages’, ‘academics' resources in competition’, ‘management of organizational service quality’, ‘social inequalities and organizational status’ and ‘diffusion of student-related financial policies’. Each cluster highlights a different way of framing competition. We find that these framings are loosely coupled and that the interdependency between different competitions is under-analysed. Additionally, we provide an exemplary examination of country-specific patterns of competition discourse and uncover local variants of global competition imaginaries. By means of the concept of multiple competition, we emphasise this interrelatedness and outline propositions to guide further research.