Consulting Firms, Benchmarking, and the Politics of Ratings

More than 100 people attended the event, which was co-sponsored by QUFA. Dr. Michael Savage, Senior Research Analyst at OCUFA and former Nous employee, warned us that once engaged, consulting firms can be very hard to get rid of. Their profit margins are huge (up to 70%). Their business models depend on repurposing previous work and selling the same solutions to different clients. They tend to favour ‘graduate hires’ – people coming directly out of university with little workplace experience and very little knowledge of higher education. They also tend to promote employer-driven governance models and have little respect for or knowledge of the collegial governance that is common at universities across Canada.

The teach-in also included presentations by two Queen’s professors: Dr. David McDonald from Global Development Studies and Dr. Norma Möllers from Sociology. They spoke about the problematic aspects of benchmarking and standardized performance measures, making arguments for the necessity of maintaining independent and democratic judgment about the university’s goals and services.

Please watch the full video, above, to learn more! To listen to a particular speaker, you may wish to click on the timings that are linked to that ‘chapter’ of the video.