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Evaluation
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Governance through Institutionalized Evaluation

Recentralization and Influences at Local Levels in Higher Education in Sweden

Christina Segerholm

Umeå University, Sweden

Eva Åström

Swedish National Agency for Higher Education

Public sectors in Europe and elsewhere are the subject of regular, recurrent and systematic evaluations. Evaluations have become institutionalized. This article examines the influence of institutionalized evaluation in higher education in Sweden. In this decentralized education system several kinds of effects of evaluation are detected locally, i.e. at whole-university and at department levels. Through an evaluation process characterized by self-evaluation, external reviews and public reports produced by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, all universities are examined. Governance operates by making universities visible, and thereby promoting comparison and competition, control and self-control. Centrally defined criteria are implemented in the process, via direct contact between the National Agency and university departments, leading to the recentralization of power. Strategies to deal with these evaluations at departmental level are developed and unintended influences, like learning resistance strategies, are highlighted.

Key Words: national criteria • power • recentralization • resistance strategies • unintended effects

Evaluation, Vol. 13, No. 1, 48-67 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1356389007073681
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