Military research in managerial universities: the legacy of systems analysis in higher education governance

The influence of the RAND Corporation’s systems analysis framework extends beyond its documented use in military, urban, and welfare policies in the U.S., permeating notions of managerial governance. From the Planning Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS) to the educational projects in international organizations and the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, systems analysis provides both an epistemic framework for conceptualising education as a measurable system and a set of practical instruments for influencing the distribution of resources in universities. This article presents a set of managerial and epistemic frameworks grounded in military research on systems analysis and investigates how specific advocacy networks have influenced higher education governance from the 1960s onwards, shaping the rise and use of performance indicators and research evaluation frameworks. It argues that systems analysis frameworks and advocacy networks deserve greater analysis and consideration in accounts of how educational governance has been transformed under new public management and neoliberalism. In fact, managerial instruments used in higher education governance mediate the relationship between the production of scientific knowledge and the objectives set by decision-makers at the institutional and political levels.