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'Improving ratings': audit in the British university system
Abstract
This paper gives an anthropological comment on what has been called the ‘audit explosion’, the proliferation of procedures for evaluating performance. In higher education the subject of audit (in this sense) is not so much the education of the students as the institutional provision for their education. British universities, as institutions, are increasingly subject to national scrutiny for teaching, research and administrative competence. In the wake of this scrutiny comes a new cultural apparatus of expectations and technologies. While the metaphor of financial auditing points to the important values of accountability, audit does more than monitor—it has a life of its own that jeopardizes the life it audits. The runaway character of assessment practices is analysed in terms of cultural practice. Higher education is intimately bound up with the origins of such practices, and is not just the latter day target of them. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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“Any measure or indicator that is merely correlated with, and is neither constitutive of nor suf fi cient for, a phenomenon of interest is vulnerable to being 'gamed' ([ 99]; cf Goodhart's law in [100]).”
From Identifying indicators of consciousness in AI systems (2026) · cites this paper as [100]
In the citing paper
“Translating traditional teaching skills into effective online teaching methods is challenging, and this process cannot be adequately quantified through checklists (c.f., Strathern, 1997).”
From Transforming Online Teacher Training Through Expansive Learning: A Case Study Applying Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and the Change Laboratory Method (2025) · cites this paper as Strathern, 1997
In the citing paper
“Restated concisely by Marilyn Strathern (137), the law observes that 'when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'”
From Misinformation in and about science (2021) · cites this paper as [137]
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- Authors
- Strathern, M.
- Venue
- European Review
- Published
- 1997
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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