ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the recent and ongoing public sector reform in Ontario, Canada that shifts university funding from a mainly enrollment- to an outcome-/performance-based funding model in order to explore how the use of outcome-based performance metrics inscribes and prescribes a performance moral into universities’ self-governance. In particular, it focuses on the 10 metrics used by the ministry to evaluate universities’ performance and on the pursuit counteractions by universities to the performance evaluation. Doing so contributes to our understanding of the moral dimension of performance metrics and how metrics partake in constructing a performing university in a neoliberalizing world of university education.