ERIC Number: EJ859241
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Sep
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0026-4695
EISSN: N/A
Performance Measurement and the Governance of American Academic Science
Feller, Irwin
Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, v47 n3 p323-344 Sep 2009
Neoliberal precepts of the governance of academic science-deregulation; reification of markets; emphasis on competitive allocation processes have been conflated with those of performance management--if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it--into a single analytical and consequent single programmatic worldview. As applied to the United States' system of research universities, this conflation leads to two major divergences from relationships hypothesized in the governance of science literature. (1) The governance and financial structures supporting academic science in the United States' system of higher education are sufficiently different from those found in many other OECD countries where these policies have been adopted to produce political pressures for an increase rather than a decrease in governmental control over university affairs. (2) The major impact upon academic science of performance measurement systems has come not externally from new government requirements but internally from the independent adoption of these techniques by universities, initially in the name of rational management and increasingly as devices to foster reputational enhancement. The overall thrust of the two trends in the U.S. has been less a shift as experienced elsewhere from bureaucratic to market modes of governance than the displacement of professional-collegial control by internal bureaucratic control.
Descriptors: Higher Education, Research Universities, Governance, Science Education, Politics of Education, Educational Administration, Educational Policy, Policy Analysis, Organizational Change, Global Approach, Measurement Techniques, Accountability
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A