Evaluations of people cannot be quantitative because it is not possible to measure what is intangible
The truth is that what is not evaluated is devalued because laziness and disorder do not easily collaborate. Nonetheless, a wrong evaluation can cause catastrophes, which heightens mediocrity by believing that excellence is sought.
Totalitarian ideologies imagine contradictions between populations where the majority oppressed by an oppressing minority will be saved by the sects that claim power. Practical politics to fulfil their purposes become assessments (evaluations) of people. Lots of people do not need demonstrations to be convinced of something. Repeating the message enough times by accessible means suffices. Others, whose salary is safe, make it a rule to obey and do not wonder about what they are doing.
What does need more explanations is demonstrating fallacies, and a long time can elapse from establishing a false ideology until it is refuted, which causes considerable harm, revolutions, wars and dictatorships. Later moreover, as whoever is ambitious for power does not seek the truth, they simply deny it, and then oblige a submitted indoctrinated population by force or lies. Millions of deaths caused by dictatorships, and millions of displaced people fleeing to live or not to be killed, are evidence.
Friends can give you presents because they love you. However, if anyone gives something to numerous people, it is almost certainly because they need them more than they love them, and it would be necessary to ask: why?; for what? An essential good is necessary to live. Public university education (PUE) is not essential, but a student pays only 20% of its real cost. Many people pay taxes, but never use PUE. What is worse, the taxes of those poor citizens who do not use PUI finance the university education of families that could pay more or even that of the wealthy
Socialists argue that they encourage equal opportunities, regardless of a university degree being useless to get a job or for being freely trained, but quite the opposite in fact: to indoctrinate. There is no opportunity to prosper if nothing is expected and the difference is noted in difficulty.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a communist university student whose ideology was published in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Later he studied economics to justify his communist ideology. That, research to confirm, is not the right way to study. If what you wish to confirm is false, then all conducted research is disposable, useless. Marx’s capital is false, disposable. Marx maintained that workers were exploited by businesspeople
There are no goods without workers. Although that is true, neither is there electricity without a physical space. The biggest Marxist mistake was to believe that apart from material costs, the quantity of work is what established the value of a good or service. He forgot to bear in mind one important component: the need or desire to possess a good or to use a service. This does not depend on a workforce, but on customer opinions, the desire to consume a product, which differs from one product to another.
Consequently, there is no objective value, no good and no invested work. If there is no objective value, exploitation cannot take place. A salary is freely agreed on, but there is no objective salary. If workers claim they are being exploited because businesspeople earn a lot, then whoever supplies premises or electricity could also claim the same
Added value comes from what businesspeople decide to do with all the ingredients needed to produce a good or a service. Besides, businesspeople take risks because customers may not choose to buy their products. So they can be ruined. When they are ruined, no-one comes stating what ruined them.
Everything changes, including university. So I am going to talk about the Spanish PUE of the last two decades.
Natural Science deserves certain trust despite the provisional nature of a scientific theory, which is accepted until it is changed or updated. Studying the behaviours of natural phenomena is more reliable, but it is necessary to be particularly sceptical about that of Human Sciences. Applying scientific method to human conduct has led to great tragedies, wars, revolutions, dictatorships.
The Marxist ideology is based on the theory of exploitation and a false economic principle (hypothesis): goods or services have a measurable, objective value. Human goods or services have no objective value in free market economy because everything is subjective. Each customer’s desire at a given time cannot be measured.
A price of a good cannot be valued only by measurable magnitudes as a cost of materials or working time, rather the fundamental intangible component of a need exists, the desire to consume a good or a service: demand. A type of garment, a journey, teaching, tobacco, etc., entail components with a material and measurable cost that are objective. Yet this is not the case of wanting to consume a good, for which the desire or need to consume the good would change.
As a produced good has no objective value, nor does work take such a value and, thus, it cannot be stated that workers are exploited. All the Marxist ideology is based on this lie, which Marxism employs to divide the population into exploiters and the exploited
This discovery is due to the Austrian School of Economics, founded by Carl Menger in 1840, only being taught at one Spanish public university in Madrid, and also at some private universities. The rest teach economics based on the objective value of good, conditions of equilibrium, which are false hypotheses in free market economy, and would only be applied in a communist dictatorship with no private initiative, no free choice.
Research seeks the truth and there are only two ways of going about it: research to confirm and by humbleness; slow research. The former starts with an initial idea of the answer, while the latter accepts not knowing the answer. If people move along the way of humbleness, they are surprised by the answer of their research, which tends to be counterintuitive; that is, unlike that expected.
Public university and quantitative public policies mean researching to confirm and always without innovation. This means that there is no challenge, no boldness, no risk involved. Normally, the answer of slow research does not confirm the initial hypothesis, but it is not carried out. Accepting that the hypothesis is false is not acceptable, and no conclusion reached while the project is underway, would be negatively valued. Then it is necessary to hide, keep quiet and lie if need be. The system requires outcomes, even though they are useless.
In the latter, slow research, one accepts not only what one does not know, but also that one might surprise. It is necessary to study the whole history of the matter at hand, perhaps even thousands of cases, until many different situations emerge. It is then when a hypothesis can be formulated and confirmed with data, with facts. Time is indefinite and you might need to invest a decade. This latter research type is that which may actually provide novelty and innovation, but it is not conducted at public universities because it must be demonstrated with quantities of outcomes every year.
Public training has a marked French influence of socialist contents, and English liberal contents and the Austrian school are completely lacking. Teachers cannot teach what they do not know. Therefore, Spanish graduates want to be civil servants, and everything they are taught is objective, certain, propublic and socialist. No subjectivism is set out, no doubts can be raised. Students learn certainties, which are always false as far as human sciences are concerned.
Donald T. Campbell described his law in 1975 about the drawback of any quantitative evaluation of people by stating that it would degrade and produce opposite results to those sought. Searching for moral shortcuts would make quantitative evaluations corrupt. Laws, rules and policies must imply that someone is mocking them, but they cannot. The quantitative methodology based on metrics and rankings has degraded the public scientific policy for two decades.
The evaluation of someone’s teaching and researching work based on quantities, regardless of them being publications, surveys, books, the so-called accreditations, mean that an objective value exists for the teacher/researcher (T/R) based on quantities. No such objective value exists. The T/R could be much better than others with smaller quantities, and could be objective and false below this threshold. With the present accreditations system, university is filled with (lifelong) mediocre people
The best evaluation is the face-to-face one judged by experts, who choose from among several possible candidates who are physically present to answer questions like: what do you intend to teach, how and why do you select these contents?; how do you motivate students?; what challenges does your research pose, who does it interest and why?; why is what you are doing important? Whenever these questions are asked to someone who is physically present, and when their answers are heard, it is possible separate the wheat from the chaff.
When face-to-face competitive examinations took place before Zapatero became President, the committee members who judged those candidates who aspired to occupy posts did so by “raffle” in the corporation, and it used to be stated that these “raffled” members could be manipulated. Whoever loses a competition always complains. At the beginning, the “raffled” population was small, but has recently become a large number and manipulating them is no easy task.
Moreover, if we do not trust the people in the “raffled lot” because they might be manipulated, why trust another alternative system that would surely be bad? Despite university being filled with an undeserving category, which should never happen, even so the face-to-face competitive examination is much better than the telematics accreditations system, where there is no guarantee of: the co-author of publications with many authors being real; all publications responding to research to confirm are, therefore, fungible.
Nothing human is objective, but subjective. Evaluating cannot be done with quantities of measurable products because the most important qualities are intangible: humbleness, generosity, patience, empathy, curiosity, willingness to serve, having ample knowledge, etc. It is not possible to make what is human objective. We have spirit, and what is spiritual is observable, but not measurable. Forgetting this would entail a wrong evaluation because it would involve replacing what is excellent with what is mediocre.