This book explores how universities as organizations influence and construct the production of academic elites and elitist institutions. It analyzes the role played by the reorganization of higher education (HE) institutions, stimulated by new performance-based narratives aimed at building attractiveness towards stakeholders such as governments, prospective employers, academics, and students. Based on American, European, and Asian case studies of HE systems and institutions considered at various scales, the volume analyzes the consequences of increasing competition between HE institutions which are facing challenges such as the internationalization of higher education supply, the shortage of public resources and the structural changes of labor market demands. It argues that policy discourses and tools, as well as assessment devices such as rankings and accreditation, incentivize HE institutions to develop positioning strategies that contribute to stratification and the production ofelites. It will be of great interest to students and researchers in the fields of higher education, sociology, and education policy.

Chapter 1. Introduction: Universities and the Production of Elites; Roland Bloch, Alexander Mitterle, Catherine Paradeise and Tobias Peter.- PART I. Setting up Narratives and Rationales.- Chapter 2. Excellence: On the Genealogical Reconstruction of a Rationality; Tobias Peter.- Chapter 3. Opening the Black Box of the Elitism Dispositif: Graduate Schools in Economics; Jens Maeße.- PART II. Disruptive Policies since the 1990s.- Chapter 4. Stratification through a Binary Degree Structure in Finnish Higher Education; Ulpukka Isopahkala‐Bouret.- Chapter 5. How Effective Have Reform Policies Been in Redesigning the French Higher Education and Research System?; Catherine Paradeise.- Chapter 6. The Global Ambitions of Irish Universities: Internationalizing Practices and Emerging Stratification in the Irish Higher Education Sector; Aline Courtois.- Chapter 7. The Transition from ‘Rank Equality’ to Vertical Differentiation in the German Higher Education Sector; Manfred Stock.- PART III. Organizing Competition through Incentives: New Policy Devices.- Chapter 8. The Production of Research Elites: Research Performance Assessment in the United Kingdom; Julian Hamann.- Chapter 9. Organizational Change in Response to the German Excellence Initiative: A Case Study of Humboldt University of Berlin; Rachelle Esterhaz.- PART IV. University Strategies for Redesigning Higher Education as Stratified Systems.- Chapter 10. Grasping the Global with One Foot in China: The Rise of Chinese Schools of Management; Tupac Soulas.- Chapter 11. Elite Business Schools and the Uses of Visibility; Jan Nespor.- Chapter 12. How to Make it in(to) Management: The Role of Business Education in Changing Career Pathways in Germany; Alexander Mitterle.- Chapter 13. Stratification without Producing Elites? The Emergence of a New Field of Doctoral Education in Germany; Roland Bloch.- PART V. Producing New Elites?.- Chapter 14. Producing a Global Elite? The Endurance of the National in Elite American and British Universities; Jonathan Z. Friedman.- Chapter 15. Academic Identity Constructions of the Écoles Normales Supérieures and the Challenges of Internationalization; Anne Schippling, Johannes Zimmermann and Maria Schmidt.- Chapter 16. Afterword: New Institutional, Inhabited Institutional, and a Cultural-Organizational Approach to Studying Elites and Higher Education; Amy J. Binder.