The strive for excellence: a social-constructivist view of performance evaluation in the university sector
The strive for excellence: a social-constructivist view of performance evaluation in the university sector

Summary/Abstract: Starting from the premise that ‘excellence’ is a socially constructed concept, this paper examines the view of excellence in higher education as held by one of the important stakeholders, the state. To that end a number of documents are discussed pertaining to a methodological proposal for financing aimed at allocating additional funds for excellence to Romanian universities in 2015 on the basis of a set of criteria expressed through performance indicators. The analysis follows the steps of Carol Bacchi’s model of meaning construction in policy making, to which insights from the literature on quality assessment in higher education are added. Thereby a number of views are confirmed about the standard-based evaluation in higher education, a type of evaluation which relies on the assumption that excellence can be measured according to performance indicators.

• Details
• Contents