'Calculemus': complex games of standardization in higher education

In the age of austerity, higher education in Europe is under the pressure of a new regime of accountability aimed at putting under control its institutional performances. The new regime of accountability consolidates before the global economic crisis and draws on a project of standardization of higher education that sustains since the initial steps of the Bologna Process the fabrication of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA from now on). The chapter illustrates that standardization in practice does not necessarily lead to the end of the heterogeneities in the EHEA. While education standards are 'normative specifications for the steering of educational systems' (Waldow 2014), standardization is a dynamic process based on the stability, but also on the malleability of standards. Recently, the history of standardization interweaves with the adoption of austerity measures, from 2007/2008, and with the need of fostering competitiveness in higher education. As a matter of fact, several 'trade-offs' between the expectations of meeting high standards of outcomes and the obligation of placing public spending under control are being produced in some European countries. The chapter will focus on the complex games of standardization of higher education in Europe, by considering education standards as epistemic objects (Mulcahy 2011; Knorr Cetina 2001). This perspective considers standards incomplete, question-generating and unfolding (Miettinen 2005; Knorr Cetina 2001) and invites to look at how standards are enacted in practice. Standardization does not lead necessarily to increasing uniformity, nor to the denial of the diversity of practice which they are intended to regulate (Busch 2011). Here, it means to look at the history of standardization of higher education in Europe, to highlight: a) how it is fabricating spaces of commensuration b) how it draws on education standards that are flexible, fluid objects, always incomplete overtime. Empirically, the chapter will rely on: a) a historiography of higher education policy in EU (Gale 2001), b) on comparative reviews of the scorecards indicators frames included in the reporting on the progress of Bologna Process, and of the range of such indicators related to funding universities through a set of performance values in European countries . In particular, we will first present the fabrication of a commensurable space of higher education, by following the Bologna Process. In the second section, we will draw attention on how the age of austerity is witnessing the diffusion of the performance funding in the higher education systems of Europe. Performance funding is a widespread standard relating higher education outcomes to the share of financing. We will highlight how: a) the alignment to this standard testifies the increasing calculability of higher education, b) the implementation of performance-based funding is far from being univocal, and during austerity times conveys the risk of amplifying the inequalities across and within EHEA via a standardized differentiation.