'The Death of Socrates: Managerialism, metrics and bureaucratisation in universities' by Yancey Orr and Raymond Orr in (2016) 58(2) Australian Universities Review 15 comments
Neoliberalism exults the ability of unregulated markets to optimise human relations. Yet, as David Graeber has recently illustrated, it is paradoxically built on rigorous systems of rules, metrics and managers. The potential transition to a market-based tuition and research- funding model for higher education in Australia has, not surprisingly, been preceded by managerialism, metrics and bureaucratisation (rendered hereafter as ‘MMB’) in the internal functioning of universities in the last decade. This article explores the effects of MMB on the lives of academics, the education of students, and the culture and functioning of universities. By examining some of the labour activities of academics, work scheduling and time use, we demonstrate that MMB reduces the efficiency and quality of academic teaching, research and administration. Even more worrying, by qualitatively assessing the language, values and logic increasingly present in the academic culture of higher education in Australia, we show that MMB does not simply fail to improve universities or accurately assess academic achievement, it replaces the core values of education with hollow bureaucratic instrumentalism.
The authors state
Then raising the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he [Socrates] drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept, not for him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having to part from such a friend.– Plato, Phaedo
The importance of measurement and standardisation for contemporary systems of control is an enduring theme associated with modernity (Weber, 1978 [1922]; Foucault, 1990 [1976]; Scott, 1998). The rise of such regimes and mentalities has not only been understood as altering structures of power but also contributing to a loss of heterogeneous forms of value, community and imagination (Alexander, 2013; Graeber, 2001; Graeber, 2015). Perhaps most famously, Weber, writing of changes in both global spirituality (2001 [1905]) and university systems (1946 [1919]) of his own day,described the effects of such processes as ‘disenchantment’ (Entzauberung). The ethnological studies tracing systems of control and subsequent disenchantment in the context of religion (Eliade, 1987), economy (Polanyi, 2001 [1944]), the family (Lasch, 1995) and sex (see Robinson, 2014 on Weber) remain seminal works in 20th Century social sciences.Such transformations are no longer research questions only to be explored in the field.The rationalisation triumvirate of metrics, managerialism and bureaucratisation (MMB) now organise the educational, professional and intellectual terrain of many universities, their academics and students.
Reflecting this general trend in humanism’s response to modernity, we offer a small study within the context of the academy that explores such systems of control and the subsequent disenchantment of secular society’s once sacred place.
This article presents a series of examples of what MMB can do to education, thereby providing feedback for academic administrators as well as analytical techniques for understanding MMB’s effects for academic staff, with their responsibility as stewards of the university,apart from simply ‘employees’ of it. To these ends, our examination of MMB in the academy is divided into two sections. The first addresses labour inefficiencies through how, by its own desire to make universities more productive and legible workplaces through centralised control, MMB creates a remarkably inefficient and unclear system through excessive management. To do this, we compare the labour (defined in time, attention and personnel) to perform common tasks in what we define as managerial and non-managerial universities. The second section explores the effects of MMB. In particular, we describe the values, behaviours and mentalities now emerging within the MMB system as an illustration of what might be described as the disenchantment of academic life.We base this comparative method from our experiences in North American and Australian universities which, for the authors; represent examples of non-MMB and MMB educational institutions, respectively. Within the context of this paper,we focus our analysis on those clear accounts of the differences between these systems, in the hope of bringing greater empirical accuracy and thus more pointed criticism of such a fundamental transformation occurring in higher education.
The thematic division of this article addresses two common positions supporting MMB in the academy.To proponents of this type of broad rationalisation, such changes in the university could appear to improve the efficiency and quality of the institution. It must first be pointed out that the managerialism found in current MMB institutions is not the traditional form of administration within a university of deans, provosts, and vice-chancellors / presidents (Ginsberg 2011). In the MMB model we refer to in this paper, managerialism extends beyond the use of business managers in administrative roles. Decisions about teaching techniques, research projects, university educational philosophies and the daily activities of academics are increasingly micromanaged. In such a system, even when administrators are academics, they make decisions based on metrics rather than human judgment. Yet, this contemporary brand of MMB in education does not reflect all types of managerialism in the private sector. The type of management philosophy that academics now often face in universities that focuses on workflows and metrics is a type of Taylorism. Associated with Fredrick Taylor (1856-1915), such a philosophy reduced labour into a series of discrete elements, each regulated by a management structure. By controlling the technical aspects of production rather than the culture or satisfaction of workers, management asserts that output is increased. Coming into fashion in the early 20th century,Taylorism has, since the 1930s, been viewed as severely flawed for industries that lack easily measured and agreed-upon tasks or outputs (Akerlof & Kranton, 2005). Academic work is not readily measurable in the context of other industries,such as the fast-food industry, that still use Taylorist management techniques. The examples highlighting the inefficiencies of MMB in the first part of this article are to address supporters of this new system on technocratic grounds.
Other supporters of MMB in education hold the ostensibly reasonable view that universities, as part of society, change within society. In a world increasingly beset by MMB, should not universities mirror this transformation? Is ‘institutional isomorphism’ (see DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) undesired in the 21st Century? To this seemingly reasonable position, we have addressed the second part of this article. It shows how such transformations alter the search for knowledge, the integrity of educators and the experiences of students. It does so through altering the values, discourse and behaviour associated with the academy. We demonstrate that the resulting culture of the university is antithetical to the venerable tradition of the advancement and dissemination of knowledge.
Before turning to our analysis, we, given the limited space within this article, will offer parsimonious definitions of the key terms to be used.We operationally define MMB as constituted from a combination of these three concepts:
Bureaucratisation: The prevalence within an institution for decisions to be made by a codified set of regulations rather than the judgments of individuals.
Metrics: The use of formal quantitative analytics rather than human judgment in evaluating the worth of individuals and actions.
Managerialism: Through the use of bureaucratic procedures and metrics, the activities of individuals and groups should be controlled by individuals not performing such activities.This is often believed to increase efficiency.
