Drawing on recent research involving approximately 6000 higher education staff, this paper examines the impact of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) on their professional lives since its launch in 2016. Our findings raise fundamental concerns, methodologically and conceptually, about the fitness for the purpose of the TEF and its failure to take into account the views and experiences of higher education staff. With a reliance on proxy metrics that emphasise the economic value of higher education over the quality of teaching, we explore how the TEF lacks legitimacy and credibility as an instrument of measurement of teaching excellence across all levels of the workforce. We also argue that the processes informing the TEF fail to take into account the experiences and perceptions of staff directly involved in teaching, which given their centrality to the quality and development of higher education, seems a lamentable exclusion.