Governing through Standards: the Faceless Masters of Higher Education: The Bologna Process, the EU and the Open Method of Coordination (Educational Governance Research Book 10)

This book offers an empirical and theoretical account of the mode of governance that characterizes the Bologna Process. In addition, it shows how the reform materializes and is translated in everyday working life among professors and managers in higher education. It examines the so-called Open Method of Coordination as a powerful actor that uses “soft governance” to advance transnational standards in higher education. The book shows how these standards no longer serve as tools for what were once human organizational, national or international, regulators. Instead, the standards have become regulators themselves – the faceless masters of higher education. By exploring this, the book reveals the close connections between the Bologna Process and the EU regarding regulative and monitoring techniques such as standardizations and comparisons, which are carried out through the Open Method of Coordination. It suggests that the Bologna Process works as a subtle means to circumvent the EU’s subsidiarity principle, making it possible to accomplish a European governance of higher education despite the fact that education falls outside EU’s legislative reach. The book’s research interest in translation processes, agency and power relations among policy actors positions it in studies on policy transfer, policy borrowing and globalization. However, different from conventional approaches, this study draws on additional interpretive frameworks such as new materialism. Foreword 6 Acknowledgments 9 Contents 10 About the Author 12 Chapter 1: Introduction: It Changes Everything 13 Chapter Outline 15 Contributions 15 References 19 Chapter 2: Analyzing Education Reforms 20 A Philosophy of Science 20 Analytical Approach 22 Hauntology: Exploring the Agency of Absence 22 Matterology: Exploring the Turn to Materiality 24 Multisited Ethnography 33 The Ideological Touch of the Bologna Research 36 Collapsing Global Bigness and Smallness into the Social 38 Exploring Agency in Policy Processes Through ‘Policy Borrowing’ 42 From Diffusion to Translation 47 Methods and Knowledge Production 50 References 54 Chapter 3: The Bologna Process: From Hard Government to Soft Governance 62 The Loose Ends of the Bologna Process 62 Governance Without Government: Circumventing the Subsidiarity Principle? 68 Governance in the Bologna-Lisbon-Mesh 71 Summary: From Orders to Incentives 74 References 74 Chapter 4: Standardizing Europe: Standards as a Mode of Governance 79 Standards, Standardization and Standardizing Processes 79 The Onto-epistemology of Standards: Re-configuring Practice 83 Setting Governance in Motion 85 The Policy Ontology of the Governing Mode of the Bologna Process 88 Summary: Governance Through the Open Method of Coordination 91 References 92 Chapter 5: The Infrastructure of the Bologna Process: Standards as Technology 96 Monitoring as a Standardizing Technique 96 The Infrastructure of the Policy Ontology: Follow-Up Mechanisms 98 Infrastructuring Standards 103 Outcome-Based Education: A New Standard for Designing the Curriculum 106 Outcome-Based Education Transitioning Danish Curricula 111 Infrastructuring Learning Outcomes: Paving the Way to Hegemony 113 Modules: A New Standard for Organizing the Curriculum 124 Modules Transitioning Danish Curricula 127 Infrastructuring Modules: Paving the Way to Hegemony 129 Summary: Paving the Way to Hegemony 139 References 143 Chapter 6: The Alteration of Higher Education: The Performativity of Standards 148 The Spectrality of the Past 148 Professional and Social Repositioning 151 Camouflage Techniques 155 Mimicking Compliance 158 Summary: Fake the Document 164 The Spectrality of the Future 166 Calculation and Acceleration of Change 168 Redistribution of Power and Influence 175 Mimicking Performance 177 Summary: A Borrowed Policy Is a Borrowed Desire 183 References 185 Chapter 7: Concluding Remarks: “Who Marks the Bench?” 188 References 193 Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction: It Changes Everything (Katja Brøgger)....Pages 1-7 Analyzing Education Reforms (Katja Brøgger)....Pages 9-50 The Bologna Process: From Hard Government to Soft Governance (Katja Brøgger)....Pages 51-67 Standardizing Europe: Standards as a Mode of Governance (Katja Brøgger)....Pages 69-85 The Infrastructure of the Bologna Process: Standards as Technology (Katja Brøgger)....Pages 87-138 The Alteration of Higher Education: The Performativity of Standards (Katja Brøgger)....Pages 139-178 Concluding Remarks: “Who Marks the Bench?” (Katja Brøgger)....Pages 179-185