Conference Agenda

Contemporary debates about governance of higher education, ranging from audit culture and global rankings to data-driven management, tend to overlook the historically layered information infrastructures that have long shaped how universities are rendered visible, comparable, and governable. This paper argues that understanding present and future trajectories of higher education requires situating these debates within a longer historical perspective on how educational institutions have been constituted as objects of knowledge.

Grounded in a historical-sociological perspective, the paper examines successive information infrastructures through which universities have been observed, classified, and compared across borders since the early twentieth century. Conceptually, the paper treats information infrastructures that facilitate coordination as boundary infrastructures (Bowker & Star, 1999): sociotechnical arrangements that stabilize particular abstractions of what a university is, thereby enabling specific forms of comparison and constraining what can be seen and acted upon. In this sense, the paper speaks to some of the issues raised at the intersection of the history of comparative education and the dynamics of globalization (i.a., Landahl, 2020; Nóvoa & Yariv-Mashal, 2003; Schildermans & Tröhler, 2024).

Three historically distinct yet overlapping regimes of observation are proposed, each associated with a different information technology and a characteristic way of relating institutional pasts, presents, and futures. The analysis starts with printed inventories, which emerged in the early 20th century, rendering universities visible through narrative information and descriptive listings. These publications promoted categorical equivalence and inclusion, while embedding a universalist epistemic stance. Rooted in liberal internationalist ideals, this regime addressed uncertainties about institutional legitimacy in a rapidly expanding global higher education landscape by assembling universities into an imagined international community. From the 1960s onwards, computerized databases recast universities as governance objects, subject to standardized reporting, classification systems, and administrative oversight, first nationally and, towards the end of the century, also internationally. Finally, the emergence of cloud-based platforms after 2000 enabled the integration of heterogeneous data streams, repositioning universities as clients and sources of extractable value.

Rather than treating history as a linear sequence of paradigmatic shifts, the analysis adopts a layered conception of historical time (Koselleck, 1985, 2018). Seen from this perspective, new regimes of observing universities do not simply replace earlier ones. Instead, observation is structured across coexisting temporal strata: singular events, such as the release of a new publication or new data, may be highly visible but least durable. They are, in turn, enabled and constrained by the affordances inscribed in information technologies. At an even deeper level are enduring cultural scripts about what constitutes university as an institution in history, which transcend the periods linked with the uptake and repeated use of specific technologies. Together, these layers form a temporally stratified field in which older regimes of observation persist and condition newer ones, rather than being cleanly superseded.

The promise of a better future is an enduringly powerful argument that sits at the heart of the United Nations’ claims to legitimacy (Auld & Elfert, 2024; Radavoi & Rayman-Bacchus, 2023). The realization of such promises is often coupled with international recommendations in education, since education is intrinsically future-oriented and concerns the formation of coming generations. At the global level, the space for defining a better future for all through education is largely captured by UNESCO (Robertson, 2022) and has been part of the organization’s discourse since its early years notably through the resolutions, recommendations and declarations endorsed by member states at the International Conference on Education or UNESCO General Conference, between 1934 and 2024.

In this context, imaginings of the future become more than mere dreams, representations, or images of what is to come. They guide perception and action and assume the role of boundary conceptualizations that coordinate and delineate the scope of thinking and action across temporal, spatial and political scales as well as epistemic communities (Andersson & Kemp, 2021; Uerz, 2006; Huvila, 2012; Star & Griesemer, 1989). In doing so, they help stabilize contemporary policies and priorities by linking present action to anticipated futures within the education policy chronotope. From a constructivist viewpoint in International Relations, they operate through discursive and material practices; dynamic techniques, narratives, artifacts, and forms of actual future-making (Berten & Kranke, 2022).

It is therefore important to take imaginings of the future seriously and worthwhile scrutinizing. Moreover, when their level of institutionalization is high, as it is the case in international education agendas, –global imaginings can be said to function as meta-norms (Carroll & Bécault, 2015; Montjouridès, 2022), making them more difficult to contest and dislodge and narrowing the range of collectively imaginable alternatives.

Against this backdrop, this paper interrogates the dimensions and evolutions of future imaginings in education adopted by sovereign states in instances of intergovernmental cooperation. More specifically, we will ask: (1) When were future imaginings frequently used in the global education discourse, and what were the conditions and contexts surrounding these moments? (2) What were the topics that evoked this heightened struggle of the future? (3) What generation modes were employed to legitimize the future-argument?

Student assessment – especially grade point average in school leaving certificate – operates as a central mechanism in access to upper secondary education in Finland today. Over time, this practice of selecting students by grades for further education has become taken for granted. Concurrently, student assessment and grades have evolved into a significant but rarely acknowledged part of everyday career guidance practices in education (Pitkänen, Harjula & Kosonen, 2025). This study sets out to analyse how assessment has evolved into its current form particularly as observed in the context of guidance and governance of students’ futures. A socio-historical genealogical approach is used to investigate this little-studied perspective on assessment and its role in educational and career guidance.

Grading and grade-based student selection is not distinctive to Finland, but a phenomenon which has a long history internationally (see e.g. Brown, 2022; Neuhaus & Jacobsen, 2022). In Europe, it can be traced back to before the birth of the modern mass education system. Over the course of time, grades have become a key part of adolescence across the world (Schneider & Hutt, 2014). Currently, they have long term implications for students’ futures; grades serve a sorting mechanism through which students are directed toward ‘suitable’ places in society. Considering the role of grades in student selection, they can be perceived as a type of educational capital when applying for further studies. Moreover, grading and student assessment contribute to students’ self-understanding and how they see their possible futures (see e.g. Pitkänen, 2022; Reay & William, 1999). Grading also shapes students’ identities in relation to achievement (Ball, 2015; Arensmeier, 2021).

In international literature, the role of grades in student selection has been reflected in young people’s experiences of stress related to grading and academic performance (e.g. Pascoe, Hetrick & Parker, 2020). The issue has also been raised in current Finnish media discussions, where young people in comprehensive schools are experiencing stress due to constant discussion about their grades and future decisions (Löytömäki, 2024; Partanen, 2025). In this sense, we see student assessment as governance producing different subjectivities. Thus, assessment does not only measure the level of learning, but it also produces knowledge about the individual student, categorizes them, and guides their future decisions.

Although grades are pivotal to students’ pathways to further education, the role of grades has not been researched in the context of career guidance. In Finland, career guidance is a school subject guided by a curriculum. Unlike other school subjects, it is not graded. However, grades given in other subjects are closely entangled in guidance processes. Our research focuses on these entanglements within the history of compulsory education and career guidance. We examine how students’ future trajectories have been governed over time at the intersection of students’ assessment, grades and guidance in state-level policy discourse. The aim of the study is to provide historical perspective to these issues from the beginning of the Finnish compulsory education in the 1920s to the present day.

We ask: how has the contemporary understanding of student assessment as a means of selection and governance of futures developed historically?

The Finnish historical trajectory provides a critical lens through which we examine how seemingly neutral student assessment practices become embedded in broader regimes of governance that resonate across education systems. By offering a genealogical perspective, the paper contributes to critical discussions on student assessment, meritocratic selection, and the normalization of grade-based governance of student’s futures in contemporary and international education systems.

School prestige is a complex political, social and cultural phenomenon. Research today indicates that school prestige, including institutional reputation, significantly correlates with learning outcomes, student motivation and academic efficiency (Burgess et al., 2009; Marcarelli & Mancini, 2022). Prestigious schools tend to attract highly motivated students and teachers, along with financial and professional resources, that further reinforce differentiation within the educational system (Thiele et al., 2016). While international studies have explored school rankings, the influence of historical events, social processes and reforms on the formation of school prestige across different eras still remains underexplored. Furthermore, there is a need to distinguish whether the prestige factors are based on actual performative quality or merely on social representations (Koning & van der Wiel, 2010; Allen, Burgess & McKenna, 2014).

To address this issue, our study aims to identify and comparatively analyze the factors influencing school prestige across three historical periods in Latvia: 1918–1940, 1945–1990, and 1991–2019. These eras are shaped by distinct political contexts: Latvia’s independence during the interwar years, Soviet occupation following World War II, and the emergence of a democratic state from the early 1990s onward. The boundaries of the selected historical periods are defined by the establishment of Latvia as an independent state and the century of its existence leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly reshaped Latvia’s educational landscape.

The theoretical framework of our study integrates two complementary perspectives: Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural sociology (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) and Serge Moscovici’s social representation theory (Moscovici, 1988; 2000). Bourdieu’s concepts help analyze how a school’s “symbolic capital” (traditions, image, culture) relates to its prestige and how its identity has been cultivated across different historical periods. Moscovici’s theory allows for the interpretation of school prestige as a collectively constructed knowledge system, using mechanisms of objectification and anchoring to analyze how the image of a prominent school is formed in public discourse.