The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education is a proud sponsor for the Disquantified Conference: Higher Education in the Age of Metrics this week on Thursday, May 16th-Friday, May 17th in the UCSB Loma Peloma Center. For the full program and more information, visit www.disquantified.org.
When choices are based upon deeply engrained beliefs, one hopes those beliefs are supported by a package of diverse considerations, contra a single numeric metric that disqualifies (or, perhaps, disquantifies*) possibly better alternatives. The conference, which is free and open to the public, explores how metrics are changing teaching, research, and governance in universities. In nine panel presentations, scholars across disciplines and located throughout the U.S. and U.K. will examine the intensified role of metrics as a make-or-break factor in Higher Education decisions, like admissions and budgeting, and teaching and research, often with “any number beating no number (no matter how bad or wrong),” says Christopher Newfield.
“I love numbers and enjoy sitting down with a big spreadsheet,” says Newfield, a UCSB professor of English and primary investigator on the underlying grant for the conference. “But the overuse of metrics supports a ‘winner-take-all’ society and weakens democracy. It tends to push the humanities disciplines and their complicated forms of communication to the margins. Overuse of metrics split science, technology and mathematics (STEM) from non-STEM, which is a problem for the creation of contemporary knowledge. ‘Disquantified’ will dig into issues that touch on how the United States is going to move forward as a society, and how to structure the university so it can be more help.”
To view the full program with presentation titles, descriptions, times, and locations, visit https://disquantified.org/conference/conference-program-2019/, and see PDF flyer below.