ABSTRACT
This chapter considers literatures that analyze new accountability policies in higher education alongside a case study of an instance where these policy trends contributed to new surveillance practices. It begins to answer how contemporary trends in higher education policy transform into surveillance practices at colleges and universities. New accountability, or performance-based budgeting, is a contemporary fad observed internationally among policy-makers (Birnbaum 2000). Unlike primary and secondary school policies (Apple 2010; Gilliom 2010; Lipman 2010), higher education policy has not usually specified exactly how institutions must meet those performance metrics established by governing bodies. Nonetheless, institutions are required to report performance to state bodies and often to public audiences. The case study included in this chapter allows us to better understand how these policies gain legitimacy and are transformed into practices based on local-level actors' translations of these policies into organizational, technical, and managerial practices.
