'Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse'

'Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse': Metrics, perverse incentives and the marketisation of Higher Education

In this seminar, Professor Cris Shore offers an anthropological analysis of the challenges in university management, especially from the perspective of academics. His analysis underscores that attempts to incentivise academic performance using quantitative measures typically fail because metrics saw a shift towards optimising what can be measured, rather than focusing on genuine scholarly work. Professor Shore will explore the underlying motivations and resulting behaviours in academic performance management. The adoption of business models and New Public Management techniques which are reshaping the mission and operations of public universities continue despite their known detrimental effects on academic productivity. This seminar will provide a comprehensive analysis of how managerialism, marketisation, and financialisation are redefining the higher education landscape.

This seminar is taking place at Deakin Downtown (Docklands) AND online (via Zoom) - please select your preferred location when reserving your place.

Speaker

Cris Shore

Cris Shore is an anthropologist who specialises in the study of organisations, power and governance.

Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London and former Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland (2023-2017), he has researched, lectured and taught widely on questions of social theory, the EU and European integration, diplomacy, austerity, management and public policy.

In 2018 he was appointed Guest Professor in Public Management at the Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research where he researched leadership and management in public organisations, particularly university. His work engages with issues of political anthropology and public policy, including the modern State, elites, constitutional reform, corruption, higher education, metrics and the rise of academic capitalism.

He is author and editor of 17 books including most recently (with Susan Wright) Audit Culture: How Indicators and Ranking are Changing the World (London: Pluto, 2024).

This seminar is presented by the Education, Governance and Policy for Sustainable Societies research group of the Centre for Research for Educational Impact (REDI) at Deakin University.