The Significance of Evaluative Homogeneity

Abstract

The creation of a technically sophisticated and deeply penetrative system for evaluating performance and quality, which comprises the essence of the Evaluative State, re-defined the procedures involved in accountability. The Evaluative State thus offset the more evident rigidities that legal homogeneity perpetuated. This it does by bringing evaluation to bear on the individual university rather than on whole sectors or institutional types, which had long been legal homogeneity’s operational focus (Teichler, 2007). What has not changed, however, is the principle of homogeneity. Agreed, one may observe a shift in the point at which the new principle of evaluative homogeneity was bought to bear as also in the procedures through which it is expressed and operationalized. Effectively, the essential identifying feature of the Evaluative State lies in re-focusing an oversight previously exercised a priori and through legislative means by an oversight expressed through evaluation and assessment exercised a posteriori by means of an evaluative instrumentality in addition to legislative fiat (Neave, 1998a).