Evaluation and Merit-Based Increase in Academia: A Case Study in the First Person

Christine Musselin (1)

1 CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations (Sciences Po, CNRS)

This article provides a reflexive account of the process of defining and implementing a mechanism to evaluate a group of academics in a French higher education institution. The situation is a rather unusual case for France, as the assessed academics are not civil servants but are employed by their university and this evaluation leads to merit-based salary increases. To improve and implement this strategy was one of the author’s tasks, when she was vice-president for research at the institution in this case. The article looks at this experience retrospectively, emphasizing three issues of particular relevance in the context of discussions about valuation studies and management proposed in this symposium: (1) the decision to distinguish between different types of profiles and thus categorize, or to apply the same criteria to all; (2) the concrete forms of commensuration to be developed in order to be able to evaluate and rank individuals from different disciplines; (3) the quantification of qualitative appreciation, i.e. their transformation into merit-based salary increases.

Mots clés: evaluation; commensuration; quantification; merit-based processes; academics

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Christine Musselin. Evaluation and Merit-Based Increase in Academia: A Case Study in the First Person. Valuation Studies, 2022, 8 (2), pp.73-88. ⟨10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.73-88⟩. ⟨halshs-03574810⟩