The Politics of Standards and Quality

Abstract

This chapter is focusing on standardisation and its consequences, describes the developments of quality politics narrowly linked to the Europeanisation process which articulate flows, tools and networks through a new mediation between different actors. The building of big data and indicators, as well as standards, serves to enhance the knowledge-based economy and lifelong learning area in Europe. It also reconfigures education systems despite national or local hybridisations and adaptations. The chapter studies the manner those standards and metrics shape new technologies in quality governance which impact on higher education as well as on other European strategy’s areas. It questioned the type of human agency created by these standardisation and normalisation processes as well as its limitations or shortcomings.