Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

med lack of effectiveness in performances. Apparently daily work of a lot of people,
the change programmes, quality projects and managerial efforts have disappointing
results. However, it is enigmatic that at the same time the UAS seems to do well in
view of the high position on the Dutch UAS’s ranking lists. Apparently we never succeed
in satisfying public demands, despite the demands of and the position in the
ranking framework, and despite of all the efforts we undertake.
This long-lasting dissatisfaction with UAS’s has led to paradoxical consequences. On
the one hand governmental educational policy has promoted greater autonomy,
responsibility and accountability of the UAS’s to encourage effective policy with regard
to education (and later on research). On the other hand the amount and intensity of
control to measure the effectiveness of the policy has grown disproportionately. In
due course autonomy has become heavily restrained by intensive control. For the
interested reader a brief historic overview (based on Bemmel, 2014) of developments
may clarify that.
Textbox 1: A historic excursion: autonomy and mounting control within UAS’s
During my career incessant topics regarding Higher Education have become
quality, funding, autonomy, accountability and governability. In 1983 – just after I
had started my career in Higher Education - the Dutch government initiated a
policy which led to scaling up of most of the polytechnic institutions for Higher
Education. With the mergers a re-allocation and concentration of tasks among
the UAS’s was intended. Lump sum financing was introduced because of the
continuous exceeding of budgets by the Ministry of Education. The policy intended
to promote greater autonomy, responsibility and accountability of the
institutions.
For many years the UAS’s united in the Netherlands Association of UAS’s tried to
enervate discussions about (the assumed lack of) educational quality. In 1989 a
national system of quality assurance was introduced by the UAS’s themselves,
through which they accounted for their quality of education. In 1997 the association
promoted the development of national standards for all the study-programmes,
followed in 2009 by the introduction of standards regarding the level of
bachelor-programmes. However, the results of the self-management by the
UAS’s apparently do not satisfy Dutch government and are much discussed in
the parliament and the media due to some incidents. After the introduction of
research in 2001 as an assignment for the UAS’s, in 2003 education and research
became objects of a national system of accreditation. The performance agreements
which in 2012 every UAS had to make with the State Secretary for Education
(Zijlstra, 2011) are a recent exemplar of dissatisfaction with self-management
of the UAS’s. These agreements require performances on the effectiveness
and efficiency of the education regarding quality of results, differentiation and
valorisation of education and research. To forestall a lack of performances these
1. Introduction: research into performativity from a ‘personal’ perspective | 13