Audit systems incentivize institutions to grade themselves lower than deserved

Evidence

Since OFSTED is now observing the college’s self-assessment systems, there is an implicit incentive for the college to grade itself and its teaching lower than it actually deserves. The result is a kind of postmodern capitalist version of Maoist confessionalism, in which workers are required to engage in constant symbolic self-denigration. At one point, when our line manager was extolling the virtues of the new, light inspection system, he told us that the problem with our departmental log-books was that they were not sufficiently self-critical. But don’t worry, he urged, any self-criticisms we make are purely symbolic, and will never be acted upon; as if performing self-flagellation as part of a purely formal exercise in cynical bureaucratic compliance were any less demoralizing. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 104

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘institutional incentive to self-denigrate’ and ‘cynical compliance’ both echo ch.4’s cynicism claims and Fisher’s FE teaching material throughout. — connects to: Performance targets distort actual work toward what is measured — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 93; Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 93; Accounting practices involve interpretation and are not straightforwardly performative — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy:…, 35 (+1 more)

Related

• Surveillance-based grading audits bureaucratic compliance, not actual performance (similarity 0.87)
• Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured (similarity 0.82)
• Audit culture makes symbolic representations of work displace actual work (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured #expands (0.82) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 93
• Accounting practices involve interpretation and are not straightforwardly performative #qualifies (0.75) — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy, 35