Within the frame of an international workshop The Roles of Universities in European Integration, we would like to invite you to this online interactive workshop. Please register here before 13 December to receive the Zoom link: 

Register for the Event

Abstract:

The continuous processes of quantification, standardization and metricization constitute a material dimension of the integration of the European university landscape, as governing by numbers could be called a Western modern invention. In the context of the Bologna Process and establishing the European Higher Education Area and European Research Area, at first sight, these tools seem fit for purpose, as well-known historian of statistics, Theodore M. Porter argued in his Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. He stated: “reliance on numbers and quantitative manipulation minimizes the need for intimate knowledge and personal trust” and thus “quantification is well suited for communication that goes beyond the boundaries of locality and community”. For this reason, in the European university landscape, as well as globally, we are witnessing a spectacular proliferation of different indicators, metrics and measures that serve the purpose of enabling control over heterogeneous institutions, as well as stimulating competition between them through constant comparisons. In effect, diverse research and teaching practices are becoming standardised in order to fit the existing metrics more easily. These processes generate well-known negative consequences. At the same time, they form the graspable expression of the united reality of the European Higher Education Area – a common academic land governed through common measures. When thinking about the quality of integration of universities in Europe we cannot avoid confronting the paradox involved in the quantification and resulting standardisation of higher education driven by metrics. On the one side, these processes provide a firm common ground that allows for governing such space as if it were unitary and abstracted from national university traditions and particularities. On the other, these processes contribute to the homogenisation of academic cultures and the devaluation of practices that are not easily subsumed under existing indicators. This workshop aims to tackle this problem and provide a space for reflection on the alternative settings suitable for the future of European universities.

Aims:

1. Introduction of sociological and genealogical approaches to study quantification, standardization and metricization. 
2. Collective work on establishing the European-wide patterns of effects and consequences of ongoing quantification, standardisation and metricization of academic reality.
3. Discussion of alternative approaches to building common spaces of trustful cooperation beyond metrics for integrated European higher education. 

Literature:

• Espeland, W., & Stevens, M. (2008). A Sociology of Quantification. European Journal of Sociology, 49(3), 401-436. doi:10.1017/S0003975609000150
• Neave, G. (2009). “The evaluative state as policy in transition: A historical and anatomical study.” In International handbook of comparative education. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 551-568.
• Szadkowski, K. (2016). Socially Necessary Impact/Time: Notes on the Acceleration of Academic Labor, Metrics and the Transnational Association of Capitals. Teorie Vedy/Theory of Science 38(1): 54-85.
• Rowlands J.  & S. Wright (2019) Hunting for points: the effects of research assessment on research practice, Studies in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2019.1706077

Participants:

PhD fellows as well as senior scholars from across Europe in the areas of higher education studies, anthropology, sociology and politics of higher education, critical university studies, etc.

Format:

The workshop will last for 2 hours and will be divided into three parts. Starting with a 30-minute introductory lecture, the participants will be invited to think about the general social and economic processes of standardisation and quantification through broad sociological and genealogical lenses. The lecture will serve the purpose of equipping the participants with the tools for their further work in small groups (45 minutes). During the small groups' discussions, participants will be asked to focus on the general patterns that connect the national examples of standardisation, quantification and metricization, and to think about the alternative arrangements that could work in place of the existing structures. The plenary discussion (30 minutes) will create a space for the presentation of the outcomes of the small group discussions, as well as for a joint extrapolation of the negative patterns and for sketching out the horizons of future alternative practices.