Living with the h-index? Metric assemblages in the contemporary academy

This paper examines the relationship between metrics, markets and affect in the contemporary UK academy. It argues that the emergence of a particular structure of feeling amongst academics in the last few years has been closely associated with the growth and development of ‘quantified control’. It e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Sociological review (Keele) 2012-05, Vol.60 (2), p.355-372
Main Author: Burrows, Roger
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic discipline
Academic profession
audit culture
Citations
Colleges & universities
Education systems
Educational evaluation
Evaluation
Higher education
Market
Markets
Metrics
neoliberalism
Organizational culture
Quality of education
quantified control
Sociology
Sociology of education. Educational systems. Lifelong education
Teaching
United Kingdom
Universities
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Summary:This paper examines the relationship between metrics, markets and affect in the contemporary UK academy. It argues that the emergence of a particular structure of feeling amongst academics in the last few years has been closely associated with the growth and development of ‘quantified control’. It examines the functioning of a range of metrics: citations; workload models; transparent costing data; research assessments; teaching quality assessments; and commercial university league tables. It argues that these metrics, and others, although still embedded within an audit culture, increasingly function autonomously as a data assemblage able not just to mimic markets but, increasingly, to enact them. It concludes by posing some questions about the possible implications of this for the future of academic practice.
ISSN:0038-0261
1467-954X
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02077.x