Movement for a Free Academia—literature database
Movement for a Free Academia—literature database |
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West, D. (2016). The managerial university: A failed experiment? Demos Journal, 3. Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard (01/05/2023, 17:30) |
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| Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Published BibTeX citation key: West2016 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: Managers Keywords: Bureaucracy, Management, Metrics, New Public Management, Universities Creators: West Collection: Demos Journal Resources citing this (Bibliography: WIKINDX Master Bibliography) |
Views: 2/269
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"The essential tool of the new managerialism is thus the spreadsheet, whereby qualitative complexities, varieties of insight and originality and disciplinary differences can be reduced to a table of figures."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:41)
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"An almost inevitable by-product of this focus on quantifiable metrics and the spreadsheet is the atrophy of managers’ ability to make judgments.[...] The attraction of quantifiable data here is the promise that such judgments can be dispensed with altogether. Managers no longer feel they need to read and try to understand the work of those they assess."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:42)
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"Mistakes are all the more likely since managers who have been relieved of the need to make judgments of quality, character or integrity quickly lose the ability to do so."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:43)
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"Since quality itself obviously cannot be reliably and objectively quantified, the metrics treasured by modern management in fact rest on various kinds of opinion survey, which provide only crude, and often illusory, indicators of an academic’s performance. Teaching ability is assessed by student surveys which, whilst they may provide useful information to teachers and their departments risk confusing popularity with quality. The best journals are those that attract contributions from the best academics who, in circular fashion, must be those whose contributions are accepted by those journals on the advice of yet other ‘top-ranking’ academics recruited as editors. Furthermore, universities too are now ranked largely by surveys of reputation. The most prestigious universities are those favoured by academics at similarly prestigious universities whose status is itself based on reputation."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:45)
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"there is an even more sinister implication of this ‘new managerialism’: a pervasive culture of control and intimidation."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:47)
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"The imperative of the modern manager is to achieve change at all costs. Just as modern academics are judged by their research outputs, modern managers are judged by the ‘reforms’ or ‘restructuing’ they bring about. These changes are the raw material of their résumé and the condition of their further promotion or dismissal. Unsurprisingly the modern manager tends to be intolerant of opposition."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:48)
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"As in the infamous ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ campaigns of Mao’s cultural revolution, academics’ views are sought not with any intention of taking them seriously but as useful indicators of loyalty to the regime."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:49)
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"Throughout the modern managerial university, pressures to perform and produce make breadth of learning and depth of thinking all but impossible for both students and academics alike."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:57)
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"The grant application process undermines the intellectual freedom of researchers, subjecting them to the imperatives of government and an increasingly powerful professoriate."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(01/05/2023, 19:58)
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