Evaluation Machinery, Qualocrats, and the Seemingly Inevitable Problem of Expansion

Abstract

In this chapter, we revisit our observations on Swedish higher education from the previous chapters. We initially discuss the relation between governing, evaluation, and knowledge. Then, we go back to the ideal typical notion of increasingly institutionalised evaluation machinery and locate the important work of what we label as qualocrats and what may be termed the burden of judgements within this overall frame. We finally discuss the expansion and the increasing complexity of evaluation and quality assurance work in higher education and point to some possible implications and problems.