Performance-Based Indicators: Another Zombie IdeaLike zombies rising from the grave, performance-based indicators (PBIs) are once again a hot topic with Alberta government officials and post-secondary education (PSE) administrators. On January 20, Minister of Advanced Education Demetrios Nicolaides announced that PBIs would be instituted in Alberta on April 1 and would be used to determine funding to universities, colleges, and technical schools. On March 27, Nicolaides retreated from his stand and said the PBIs would be postponed to the end of May due to the problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic but assured everyone that the idea will soon be reactivated.
PBIs have a long history but it is no accident they first became the vogue in the Reagan/Thatcher era, as one aspect of the neo-liberal movement is to transform universities into businesses, complete with the top down structures favoured by the corporate sector. Minor details like collegial governance (which has now been reduced to a ritual in most PSE institutions) and academic freedom (which is now being attacked under various guises, such as "incivility") were labelled as impediments to "doing business," much like workers' rights and environmental regulations. As Thatcher infamously said, "There is no society; there is only the market." So, the neo-liberal view is that the so-called free market should govern PSE and business managers should run the PSE institutions with that in mind. Historically, PBIs have reached heights of true absurdity. This is mainly due to the endless attempts to reduce everything to numbers. In 1980s New Zealand, the government ridiculously proposed "costs-per-square-foot" as the true indicator of a PSE institution's efficiency. Other governments have suggested treating the graduate with a degree as a "product" of the staff, library, computer and other costs required to produce "it." A third approach is to tie "performance" directly to graduate hiring rates alone, as if that is even possible in today's gig economy when so many are part-time workers with no security, even at the PSE institutions themselves. Clumsy attempts to apply the "numerical approach" to evaluating the effectiveness of PSE show over and over it is almost impossible to measure what PSE institutions do or should do. Graduation rates may be measurable. But how does one, for example, put a number on social contribution, critical thinking, creativity, tolerance, problem-solving skills, leadership, wisdom, access for marginal groups, diversity of staff, and so on? Scholars have spent decades trying to clarify what these things even are, let alone how to measure them. So PBIs simply discount these important factors. Governments and the administrators who do their bidding, by pushing PBIs, basically assert that what cannot be quantified is not valuable and therefore can be ignored. Perhaps they should listen more closely to Einstein's famous dictum: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." A further point is that the items that are to be "measured" by PBIs are often not even under the control of the university or its staff. For example, when a government slashes operating budgets, the response of the university can only be to oppose the cuts or to knuckle under and figure out ways to eliminate staff and programs to meet the new budget guidelines, totally disregarding the fact that the staff are the producers of all value. Unfortunately, the second alternative is the one that PSE institutions in Alberta have chosen. Not a single PSE institution has stood up to the UCP government's cuts or to the mandating of PBIs. Of course, the fact that last August the UCP replaced extant PSE institution board chairs with their own appointees from industry has contributed to the undermining of internal resistance. It is a delusion to think that PBIs will somehow ensure "accountability" and/or produce "excellence" in PSE. The idea is an insult to educators, students and support staff as well as a complete misrepresentation of the real purposes of education. Education is not a business, nor should it be the mere handservant of industry. PBIs' numbers will provide no guidance if the aim is really to improve our PSE institutions. However, the other point is that it is just as possible that PBIs could produce exactly the opposite conclusion to that of the cost-cutters. Then they might be used to show that what universities really need is not cuts but more funding, legislation affirming the right to education, more permanent faculty with benefits, more and better equipment, and the freezing, reduction and eventual elimination of all student fees.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
The neo-liberal
idea of PBIs, which originated in the business
world, tries to tie "costs" to the production of
a particular commodity, with the basic intention
of driving down those costs. That is why the
rise of PBIs is always accompanied by relentless
budget cuts to public education. In the field of
post-secondary education, common PBIs include
enrolments, graduation rates, and hiring rates
of graduates. But there are two things wrong
with the idea of PBIs from the get-go. First,
education is an investment, not a cost. Second,
education is not a commodity; it is a public
good which must be constantly expanded to bring
about the continuous improvement of society.