Fighting fire with fire: On using evaluation to counter the impacts of evaluation

by Andreas Hafner

Amsterdam_protests_Laauwen Media
Protesters in Amsterdam – Photo by Laauwen Media

During the last few years a number of bigger student protests have taken place in various countries (e.g. Chile or Canada). Some are taking place at this very moment. Protesters in the UK, Canada and the Netherlands are trying to improve living-, working- and studying- conditions for students and staff of their universities while also attempting to turn their universities’ structures more transparent. Let us take a more detailed look at one specific country. For a few months now students and staff of Dutch universities have protested for more democratic and transparent university governance structures and against precarious working conditions, financial speculation with university funds and the cutting and/ or merger of departments. Many of the conditions under critique are either directly about or at least closely linked to practices of evaluation in contemporary academia. The protests are not targeted at evaluation methods as such, but at the goals to which ends they are employed. These goals are financial efficiency and hand in hand with that the streamlining of knowledge production and teaching to the exploitation logic inherent in the currently dominant economic paradigm. Most of this critique of the current situation is not new. Quite a few authors have pointed out the problematic impacts of some forms of evaluation in academia, e.g. Shore and Wright with ” Coercive accountability: the rise of audit culture in higher education” (2000, pp. 58-89).

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