Research Evaluation, 2022, 1–11

https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvac018
Special Issue Paper

Devices of future excellence: Detaching

excellence recognition from ‘eminent men’

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1, 2,3
Roland Bloch * and Alexander Mitterle
1
Center for School and Educational Research, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Franckeplatz 1, Haus
31, 06099 Halle, Germany, 2Department of Social Sciences, University of Hamburg, Max-Brauer-Allee 60, 22767
Hamburg, Germany and 3Institut für Mittelstandsforschung, University of Mannheim, L9, 1-2, 68161 Mannheim,
Germany
*Corresponding author. Email: roland.bloch@zsb.uni-halle.de.

Abstract
The global diffusion of the graduate school organizational model has shifted the way future academic
excellence is identified from a paternalistic master–disciple relationship to a collective organizational
decision. ‘Eminent men’ used to recruit PhD students on the firm belief that they could identify excel-
lence and integrate it in their own scientific endeavor. Graduate schools formalize such judgments and
transform them into an organizational decision. They establish admission devices to assure criteria-
based collective decisions. To understand this shift, the article draws on the example of two German
graduate schools that proclaim to search for outstanding doctoral candidates. As a latecomer in the
transformation to graduate schools, the German case allows to observe the shift in statu nascendi. The
article highlights the distinct role multi-site admission devices play. In both cases, they redistribute
agency and excellence through the construction of competitive social fields. Documents, grades, com-
mittee deliberations, interviews, and excel files mobilize a social space in which applicants are qualified
as acting holistically and competitively against each other in order to identify those most likely of future
excellence. Admission is not predefined but the result of a cascade of socio-material fielding practices
that purify a comparative social space, qualify applicants competitively, and infuse them with site-
specific agency that increasingly authenticates them as field actors. Building on the work of Michel
Callon and colleagues, we understand such formatting of future excellence as field agencements.

Key words: competition; agencement; admission; graduate schools; field; Germany

I approached the honorable man in June 1914 in a frock coat and paternalistic relationship between master and disciple that has trad-
top hat as it was suitable for a student at that time and was greeted itionally shaped doctoral education in Germany. Everything, from
by him at his home Am Hohenweg; the mansion still stands today. the professor’s forehead, the student’s clothing to the mansion
Of his professorial appearance, with a hoary beard and a thin reced- underlines the status difference in this relationship. It is built on two
ing hairline, the well-formed, slightly bulged-out forehead and the premises: Husserl sees in Plessner a follower of his analytical ap-
sunken-in temples were the most enthralling. He received the young proach—phenomenology—and, with a wink, a potential genius.
and intimidated visitor with warmth and paternal friendliness and Excellence at that time was an attribute of position (cf. Peter 2014:
indicated that he personally welcomed and supported his decision to 34ff) but one that emanated from the master to the disciple through
leave Heidelberg and to pursue his doctorate in Göttingen. . . . The a process of socialization.
phenomenology provided ‘room for a thousand geniuses’ Husserl While professors today are rarely approached in frock and top
told me right at my first visit, with a slightly ironic wink hat, the underlying premises have remained firmly in place. German
professors choose their PhD students based on subjective judgments.
(transl.1 Plessner 2003: 344, 352)
They recruit on the firm belief that they can identify excellence and
Famous sociologist Helmuth Plessner’s description of the first en- integrate it in their own scientific endeavor.
counter with his to-be doctoral advisor (in German Doktorvater ¼ This understanding of identifying excellence is widespread in
doctoral father) Edmund Husserl exemplifies in great detail the academia (Lamont 2009). It however is only one criterion of many
C The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press.
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2 Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0
in recruiting PhD students. In most countries, the identification of
future excellence is framed and mediated through formal organiza-
tional procedures of universities. The global diffusion of the organ-
izational model of the graduate school (Nerad and Heggelund 2008;
Nerad and Evans 2014) has detached the recognition of excellence
from a paternalistic master–disciple relationship and transformed it
into a collective organizational decision. In Germany, graduate
schools have been in place only since the mid-2000s. German uni-
versities are still organized around chairs and PhD students are typ-
ically recruited by the professor. The German late-coming to
graduate schools thus allows to observe a process that has taken
place across the globe in statu nascendi: the transition in the identifi-
cation of future excellence from the intimate socialization through
‘eminent men’ to admission devices in an increasingly rationalized
university (Ramirez 2006). By singling out two case studies of
German graduate school admission, the article highlights the distinct
role multi-site admission devices play and the way they redistribute
agency and excellence through the construction of social fields. In
building on the work of Callon et al., future excellence is increasing-
ly established in what we call field agencements.
1. Graduate schools as a new way of organizing
admission
To account for the recent transformation in German doctoral educa-
tion, it is important to understand how the paternalistic relationship
between ‘eminent men’ and disciples survived the transformation to
mass higher education. The 20th century saw a differentiation of
academic degrees in German higher education. During the 19th cen-
tury, the PhD and the state exam had been the only academic
degrees. Through the upgrading of technical and business schools to
universities at the turn of the 20th century and academic differenti-
ation after the Second World War, the lower academic degrees dip-
loma and magister spread. The doctoral degree’s significance was
reduced to an elite status symbol and to a qualification for an aca-
demic career. With the advent of higher education expansion in the
1960s, universities increasingly lacked qualified academic personnel
to teach growing numbers of students. There were not enough PhDs
to fill the vacant postdoctoral positions. To accommodate the de-
mand for academic teachers, universities increasingly used a lower
academic position: the research associate (wissenschaftlicher
Mitarbeiter). In consequence, academic degrees were vertically dif-
ferentiated, with a first academic degree (state exam, diploma,
magister) becoming the prerequisite for both the PhD (Vom Bruch
2007) and the research associate position. Universities however did
not develop a clear framework for doctoral education (Enders
1996). Research associates were firmly integrated in the teaching
and research work of professorial chairs as the basic organizational
unit of German universities. The intimate choice of disciples
remained unchanged and became normalized on a large scale since
in most cases, both the research associates’ work contract and their
doctorate depended on the support of the same professor. In con-
trast to other higher education systems, the double dependency on
the professor as PhD student and research associate strengthened the
chair system and the neo-feudal relationship with the chair’s
occupant.
Consequentially, PhD students are recruited by professors, not
universities. Labor law applies to the position of the research associ-
ate but does not extend to PhD admission. Protected by the
constitutionally granted freedom of research and teaching, profes-
sors cannot be instructed to supervise PhD students. Even if the lat-
ter fulfill the formal requirements, supervision, and with that
admission, remains a professorial decision to which no formal crite-
ria apply.2 To this day, admission to the PhD has remained a ‘blind
spot’ in law that leaves it to a presupposed ‘basic trust in the integ-
rity of all actors’ involved (Gärditz 2015: 284, 288).
The growth of the research associate was not paralleled by an
equal growth of professorial positions. Between 1972 and 2020, the
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number of professors at German public universities quadrupled
from 6,300 to 25,000, while the number of research associates
increased 13 times from 13,000 to 173,000.3 Career perspectives
are bleak. With such a relatively low success rate in the academic
system, excellence today is validated retrospectively—through
becoming a professor—rather than by the subjective judgment of
university professors that often are known only to a small number
of interactants in their discipline. While the pre-1960s professor as a
widely recognized and thus eminent man legitimized his subjective
choice qua social position, there is nothing glamorous about the re-
cruitment of research associates in over-crowded universities. If they
do not succeed in securing a permanent position—usually a profes-
sorship—they are unceremoniously strained out by law after 12
years. The mass system lacks both organizational arrangements to
frame doctoral education and a clear framework to identify
excellence.
Such forms of self-referential reproduction run counter to a
growing engagement of nation states and their universities to foster
research excellence and to attract talent in the increasingly competi-
tive environment of the ‘knowledge economy’ (Paradeise and
Thoenig 2015). The German Excellence Initiative, a competitive
scheme for distributing public research funds, responded to this
need by integrating so-called ‘Graduate Schools of Excellence’ as a
core condition for institutional funding. Among the funding criteria
was the implementation of formal and competitive admission proce-
dures. In a very short period, the field of German doctoral education
was restructured towards a large number of graduate schools in
hope of funding. Today, all public universities in Germany have at
least one graduate school or comparable doctoral program (Bloch
2018).
2. Methodological perspective: on devices,
agencements, and field construction
German higher education has a long tradition of identifying academ-
ic excellence through the subjective judgment of the professor. The
formal organization of admission to doctoral education consequen-
tially integrates such subjective judgments but transforms them into
a rationalized and collective choice by the graduate school.
To understand this transformation, the article draws on a
range of analytical perspectives from After-Actor-Network-Theory
that theorize devices. Graduate schools will be analyzed through
the interconnection of three distinct concepts: device, agencement,
and field. The device refers to the concrete form of an admission
procedure, the agencement to its operational logic, and field to the
distinct operational logic of agencement in an admission device.
In studying markets, researchers at the Ecoles de Mines in Paris
have developed a tool-set to describe the fine-grained processes and
performative effects taking place in socio-technically framed and
directed spaces (Callon 2021). They have formed a wide-ranging
Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0
research program to analyze the functioning of markets. Rather
than bifurcating between an economic science that invokes concep-
tions of markets and economic rationality and the social embedded-
ness of markets, Michel Callon and colleagues aim at thinking the
scientific, social, and material aspects that institute distinct markets
as entangled (C¸alışkan and Callon 2009). Starting with concrete
markets—such as strawberry or derivative markets—they investi-
gate how these operate: ‘their design, implementation, management,
extension and maintenance—in short . . . their dynamics’ (C¸alışkan
and Callon 2010: 19). Markets may seem abstract, but they are
enacted through what they call devices. Such a market device may
be a program, a bank, a scorecard, etc. A device is a separable socio-
technical instrument that can be meticulously investigated and its
inner workings exposed (Muniesa, Millo and Callon 2007). While
the everyday meaning of device refers to a technical instrument that
extends or facilitates our agency—a TV remote control (change
channels), a weapon (kill), a smart-phone (call)—the term also
alludes to a distinct socio-philosophical tradition. Callon and
Muniesa’s (2005) as well as Latour’s (1987) ‘inscription devices’ are
rooted in the works of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. The
French equivalent of a device, the dispositif, was developed by
Foucault as a distinct discursive and strategic formation. Deleuze’s
interpretation (1991) provided it with a socio-material spin. Callon
and colleagues then adapted the term to describe the socio-technical
arrangements that frame markets (cf. Callon 2007; Cochoy 2016).
A device in this sense is thus more than a purposeful facilitator.
Devices actualize scientific theory. They are world-building arrange-
ments. They comprise the architecture that translates economic mar-
kets from the imaginative world of scientific formulas to the way in
which distinct goods or services are exchanged. Translations always
come with betrayal (Latour 1996: 376). In adhering to the formula,
they necessarily deviate from it to make it work. Here, the wider no-
tion of the Foucauldian-made Deleuzian device becomes apparent.
Devices institute their own subjectivities and objects. In this way,
they perform people, regulations, and techniques as an ensemble in
the multiple ways discussed above.
While inspired by Foucault, the device is not a dispositif. Callon
(2021: 357) especially opposes the interpretation of dispositif as a
formatting apparatus of ‘living beings’. Precisely because devices
perform their own subjectivities and objects (the socio-material
spin), Callon and colleagues aim to avoid any pre-imposed under-
standing of (human) agency and intent in socio-technical arrange-
ments. Rather, they emphasize the collective but contingent agency
that relates statements and formulas to their socio-technical actual-
ization in devices. They call this socio-material intermeshing agence-
ment. Again, the term agencement (translated in English to
assemblage) traces back to Deleuze, namely his collaborative work
with Felix Guattari (2004) in ‘Thousand Plateaus’. An agencement
‘conveys the idea of a combination of heterogeneous elements that
have been carefully adjusted to one another’ (Callon 2007: 319).
The choice of the terms ‘device’ and ‘agencement’ leads to an analyt-
ic problem. Deleuze’s agencement also originates in his reading of
Foucault’s dispositif (Deleuze 1992; Callon 2021: 358). In order to
break away from these ‘treacherous translation[s]’, Callon suggests
narrowing the device to the socio-technical reading above and to use
the term agencement for an overreaching ‘realistic simplification . . .
determining the most significant variables, rather than simply cele-
brating the world’s complexity’ (Callon 2021: 360). The heterogen-
ous elements in devices are ‘carefully adjusted’ to provide the
agencement with a distinct but mutable form, framed across various
3
devices and sites, ‘a coordinated action around a strategic goal as . . .
in the case of market agencements’ (Callon 2021: 361). Callon thus
integrates a form of power-analysis into the study of markets.
Agencement explicates the success of integrating an economic state-
ment into its socio-technical context. It denotes a process that builds
on trials, tools, equipment, valuation systems, procedures, etc. In
this sense, it is agencement that renders a device economic—as mar-
ket device (Muniesa, Millo and Callon 2007: 3; C¸alışkan and Callon
2010: 9).
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Beyond the descriptive and thus diffuse definition of agencement,
the agencements in market devices have specific features in com-
mon: they analyze how market goods are established through ob-
jectification, singularization, and qualification (as the most
significant variables). For markets to operate, a ‘thing’ has to be
identified and singularized as a passive but moveable market object
with distinct and valued properties (C¸alışkan and Callon 2010). It is
extracted, translated, and reformatted to fit a framed market setting
(Callon and Muniesa 2005: 1235). It is made a good. This can be a
basket of strawberries but also a service that lacks ‘physical reality’
(Callon and Muniesa 2005: 1233). The price of the passivated good
as the result of these various (but open) framings is what ultimately
qualifies the agencement as a market agencement.
Given the selection of PhD students does not come with a price-
tag on their work, understanding graduate school admission as part
of a market agencement would assume markets where they do not
exist. Callon calls this counter-agencement and failure. Admissions
indeed establish a competitive and time-bound space to identify fu-
ture excellence but, as we will see, at no point do these arrangements
single out and passivate market goods. Callon does address such
spaces but only as a qualifying void that stabilizes markets. He calls
spaces that ‘are free from all internal commercial transactions’ but
come with a number of qualifications ‘transaction free zones’
(Callon 2021: 370). One example of such a space is the ‘world-
championship for baristas’, an international competition in which
‘all the efforts converge to qualify a coffee without a price’ (Callon
2021: 371). Cafes that adhere to the formal standards of the com-
petitive ‘playing field’4 can argue they are serving good coffee
(Callon 2021).
Treated as non-commercial qualifier for goods, assigning the
term ‘transaction free zones’ might be adequate. In view of the over-
lapping and intermeshing of agencements, these competitive spaces
ought to be themselves understood as a carefully adjusted agence-
ment. The main purpose of the world-championship of baristas is,
as the name indicates, not to judge the quality of coffee but the abil-
ity of a barista to brew coffee.
The realization of competitive standards in a local cafe allows to
evaluate the local barista as if it was the world championship: given
same standards her or his brewing may be worse than next door. By
singling out a range of standards and testing procedures, cafes and
their employees are drawn together as local expressions of and posi-
tions in a competitive field in coffee brewing. What is crucial is the
role of competitive standards. By defining what counts, everything
else is scrutinized as the ability of the barista. Anything in the com-
petition can become relevant but only as the agency of the person
assessed. S/he is singled out and made comparable. In contrast to a
market that passivates and mobilizes goods, the social space empow-
ers and mobilizes social units. The space over-socializes its subjects
in that it values ceteris paribus nothing but situated agents along
taste and more or less defined criteria. Rather than folding (the repu-
tation of) market-actors into separated objects (exchange goods),
4 Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0
objects are either standardized (the machine) or folded into actors as
qualities (cf. Mitterle 2022).
In this way these ‘transaction free zones’ transcend their com-
petitive purpose and are not just barista championships. Each cafe
that adheres to the standards operates as a device to imagine this dis-
tinct social space. They are not merely ‘zones’ but empirical manifes-
tations of the psychological and sociological concept of the social
field. Deriving from magnet theory, fields have become analytical
forms of reducing complex interrelations to their social components
(cf. Martin 2003). Space is ‘directed’ (Lewin, 1917) towards social
relations, their patterned diffusion (DiMaggio and Powell 1983),
and at establishing contested positionality among actors and social
aggregates (Bourdieu 1998; Wooten and Hoffman 2008). While in
sociology and psychology social fields are primarily used to explain
social interaction, these explanations leave traces of validity that re-
form social space towards their theoretical frame. Bourdieu’s corres-
pondence analysis of the French Grandes Écoles for example did not
just describe the structure of French elite higher education but
reduced it to meaningful relations in the field. He thereby positioned
these schools towards each other so that we can grasp them collect-
ively but also to make each of their actions a positioning in this puri-
fied social space. The impressive visuality allowed to transfer the
model to other higher education systems. While positionality is not
rank order, the way rankings are constructed today imagines higher
education as a field of competitive actors rather than locally
embedded state institutions (cf. Bloch and Mitterle 2017).
Sociological and psychological research as well as changing cultural
perceptions and technical innovations have made it increasingly pos-
sible—beyond the specific sociological frame of analysis—to per-
ceive social relations as taking place in social fields.
Admission processes are thus not mere selection processes in
which excellence can be intimately recognized or tested but they
themselves are devices that ‘impose a view of the social that estab-
lishes strict distinctions’ (Callon 2021: 356). Commonly referred to
as a ‘field of applicants’ (Bewerberfeld), they resemble the way field
concepts structure space. In contrast to After-ANT’s emphasis on
bringing the socio-material ordering in especially the natural scien-
ces to light, this approach emphasizes the agencement of sociological
and psychological concepts. Field agencement is a distinct way of
using socio-material instruments to build fields that are nothing but
social. Social fields as analytical concepts and as material devices
share a complicity to reduce a factual space to meaningful and
shared relations of social units. The shared relations restrain but
also hold potentiality for directed improvement. These spaces are
not predetermined but bounded spaces for ordering (Mannheim
1958). In this sense, it is agencement that formats the admission de-
vice into a field of comparable actors which procedurally positions
the applicants vertically to draw the most excellent from its pool.
Agencement renders admission a fielding device.
3. Admission devices and future excellence—the
cases and methods
With the implementation of so-called Graduate Schools of
Excellence came the call for not only formally organizing admission
but also for framing it as a competitive procedure to select the best.
And basically, the selection . . . is highly competitive. Well, by
now we get applications worldwide. We have received 270 appli-
cations for nine positions. And that is a multi-stage process, very,
very extensive, we put a lot of effort into it. And yes, you can say
that . . . we get the best. (Professor, Scheelheim Graduate School,
Interview 1, lines 126–31)
We have a very, very strict admission process, very competitive.
. . . And when you look at the students we have attracted and
accepted, then this is an extremely good selection, we have ex-
tremely good students at Gen-Ius. . . . We have no mainstream
people, we have people who think interdisciplinarily . . . we sim-
ply have exceptionally smart students. (Professor, Gen-Ius
Graduate School, Interview 19, lines 163–75)
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Those who found a graduate school at a German research uni-
versity aim to recruit excellent doctoral students. They thus reinvig-
orate the idea of recognizing excellence so remarkably exemplified
by Plessner. The eminent men’s claim of excellence recognition stuck
to the new procedures. While the recruitment of research associates
maintained an ambivalent relationship to excellence—graduates
were recruited as disciples but also as deplorable and easily dispos-
able workforce—graduate schools are built around an organization-
al model that not only provides formation but also establishes a
distinct organizational border to elevate its selection. Crucially, the
graduate school model is a major revision of the German chair sys-
tem. For the first time, PhD student positions are implemented in
universities that are formally attached to an organizational unit ra-
ther than individual chairs: supervisor and employer are split apart.
In line with the Anglo-Saxon model, the purpose of organized ‘doc-
toral admissions [is] . . . about identifying rising stars’ (Posselt 2016:
74). This takes place through a cascade of changing selection stages
which increasingly narrow down the number of applicants (cf.
Bloch et al. 2015). In stark contrast to the intimate selection by the
professor or the mass recruitment of non-tenured doctoral research-
ers, this cascading border zone of the graduate school operates as a
socio-material device to identify future excellence for the school and
its professors.
In the following, we examine the way admission devices select
applicants drawing on two organizational case studies of German
graduate schools that were funded by the Excellence Initiative from
2007 to 2018. The case studies were conducted within the larger
framework of a research unit that investigated emerging stratifica-
tions across different levels of the German educational system
(2011–7). Within an ongoing vertical differentiation of German
higher education, Graduate Schools of Excellence have become a re-
source for positioning universities in excellence competitions and be-
yond. The cases were selected along the distinction established by
the Excellence Initiative and included two Graduate Schools of
Excellence located in different (inter-)disciplinary contexts. The case
studies built on reviewing formal documents (curricula, PhD regula-
tions) and self-accounts for advertising purposes, and ethnographic
observations of core organizational processes in the graduate
schools (here: the meetings of the selection committee, in one case
also the interviews with candidates). To understand the decision
making and the rationale of graduate school members in these proc-
esses, we further conducted 24 problem-centered interviews with the
schools’ faculty, administration, and students (cf. Table 1).
Problem-centered interviews prestructure the narrative (cf.
Witzel 2000) in order to integrate parts of the process that are diffi-
cult to observe, to which access is denied, or to reveal the cognitive
dimension of organizational processes (here: identifying excellence
in admissions). Formal documents, interviews, and observations
were used as ‘entry points’ to building thick socio-material descrip-
tions (Nespor 1994) of the admission processes and to identify the
Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0 5

Table 1. Interviews by position, gender, discipline, and graduate school

Gen-Ius graduate school Scheelheim graduate school

Total Female Social sciences Natural sciences Total Female Humanities Social sciences

Faculty 5 0 2 3 5 1 2 3
Administration 3 3 – – 1 1 – –
PhD students 3 2 1 2 7 4 2 5
Total 11 5 3 5 13 6 4 8

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Names of persons and schools have been pseudonymized to allow for a better reading. The gender composition of the interviewees reflects general gender
inequalities in German academia. Faculty members and PhD students were chosen to cover the range of disciplines involved in the graduate school. In both
schools, the head of administration was interviewed. At Gen-Ius, further administrative staff for specific tasks such as admission were interviewed.

multiple ways in which the schools construct themselves as sites of
excellence. Following the way academics make their decisions, how
they integrate standardized admission documents, use calculation
devices, and attribute legitimacy, the case descriptions abductively
explicate that the graduate schools attribute excellence through the
factual construction of a competitive social field.
4. Fielding devices I: holistic reviews,
commensuration, and authentification
Gen-Ius is a Graduate School of Excellence that combines disciplines
from the social sciences and the natural sciences. The school was
founded to establish not only a new interdisciplinary research field
but also a new discipline. The admission procedure begins by requir-
ing applicants to provide a dossier of documents designed to present
themselves: a CV, a research proposal, a statement of purpose, a
standard-language test, and letters of recommendation. These pre-
requisites for being considered as applicant take an increasingly
rationalized and standardized form. They allow to address various
competencies of the applicants and to render them comparable in a
competitive admission setting. As Hamann and Kaltenbrunner (in
this issue) show, CVs have changed from a narrative to dense but
easily navigable bullet points that provide a wide perspective on pro-
fessional accomplishments, or—as we will see—voids.
The research proposal, while generally expected in the social sci-
ences and humanities, is uncommon in the natural sciences. There,
doctoral candidates are usually recruited to conduct third-party
funded research projects within a professor’s research group. The
dissertation emerges as the research project progresses. For the ad-
mission process, the research proposal allows to formally compare
applicants from natural and social sciences while also projecting ex-
cellence and selectivity for the program.
Admission heavily expands into individual timeframes before the
actual selection process, urging applicants to create differentiated
dispositions that are directed at this procedure. This qualification
for admission is what allows to span a common comparative space
of information and testable selves for the purpose of preselecting
applicants. The first stage of the admission procedure draws on pro-
fessorial members of the school to review the dossier. It is predomin-
antly paper-based:
There is a person behind this statement of purpose. What does
this person want to do? Well, on two pages you can somehow al-
most immediately see, is this an interesting person, is this person
maybe in the wrong place here, or in the right place, or is it some-
how somebody who wants to do something here but has no clear
idea what exactly that could be. That is something you can see
pretty clearly in these things. Of course, they can also be forged
etc. That is possible, too. But somehow you can see a lot in them.
(Professor, Gen-Ius Graduate School, Interview 24, lines 134–40)
In stark contrast to the differentiated list of prerequisites, the
first comparison of applicants in the admission procedure does not
rely on distinct criteria but diffuse characteristics of Gen-Ius.
Professors holistically reconstruct the person through documents:
drawing on the statement of purpose, an interesting personality, the
matching with the graduate school, or a lack of structure can be
‘pretty clearly’ identified. They can ‘see’ whether applicants ‘really
have the interest and competency to look beyond the rim of their
tea-cup’, as a professor (Gen-Ius Graduate School, interview 16,
lines 233–4; emphasis added) exclaims. Even the research idea is
seen as a mere expression of the applicant’s ability. The various
texts, images, and references are folded into ‘the person behind this
statement’.
To allow for comparison among applicants, not all potential in-
formation is accessible, but the format allows for excessive combin-
ation. It is also strongly advised that applicants talk to potential
supervisors beforehand which provides additional contextual infor-
mation. In this sense, the setting provokes agency among the frag-
mented selves: the way each primarily document-constructed
individual is able to perform a stable and authentic personality—one
that does not lack a ‘clear idea’ or seem ‘forged’—relates to its com-
petitors and perceptions of agency through those selecting (Rothe
2013: 64).
In the ways such situated and fragmented experience allows to val-
idate a competitive selection, it is complicit in transforming admission
into a social field. The endeavor roots in early 20th century
Gestaltpsychologie which assumed that from structured experimental
social field settings, holistic personality traits could be derived
(Highhouse 2002). The careful analysis of documents, group inter-
action, or interviews thus allows to perform and judge authentic behav-
ior of applicants. More than that, in contrast to the psychoanalysis of
impulses or to assuming individual predispositions—as it was common
in the 1940s and 1950s—Gestaltpsychologie contended that personal-
ity traits could only be derived and understood in situ. Early propo-
nents of this approach—such as field theorist Kurt Lewin—developed
test formats that were the forefathers of what today is known as assess-
ment centers (Horn 2002; Rothe 2013). Such review formats are
directed at identifying distinct leadership traits or at least personnel suf-
ficiently fit to the task, not future research excellence. Gen-Ius admis-
sion does not spell out how future excellence might be assumed. In this
sense, it is more likely that the selection procedure did not build on psy-
chological expertise—in fact lacking the participation of expert psy-
chologists as it is common in assessment centers—but mimetically
6 Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0
borrowed elements common to admissions in US graduate education.
The admission thus highlights the expansion and legitimacy of proce-
dures to measure situated and competitive action (fields) for judging
abilities despite a lack of evidence that these procedures serve the pur-
pose adequately (cf. Highhouse and Kostek 2013). The admission de-
vice at Gen-Ius is loosely built on a paper-based, individual-centered
selection process known as ‘holistic review’ (Stevens 2009: 186ff).
Holistic review—again rooted in the situational phenomenology of
Gestaltpsychologie—became the state-of-the-art admission practice at
US universities because it made it possible to weigh criteria such as di-
versity without using quotas or over-valuing standardized measures (cf.
Posselt 2016: 56). Lacking any functionality beyond narrowing down
the number of applicants without incurring high travel or organization-
al costs, the holistic review highlights a critical element of the admis-
sion procedures. What creates ‘exceptionally smart students’ at Gen-
Ius are not distinct formal criteria that would allow for a common
frame of excellence recognition. It is simply the ‘belief’ (Highhouse and
Kostek 2013: 565) in the holistic sorting power of the evoked competi-
tive social field.
While in the US this ‘belief system’ is in its extreme form directed
at valuing each applicant as an individual in a deliberative process
among admission staff (cf. Stevens 2009), at Gen-Ius, the paper-
based judgments of reviewers are translated into a commensurable
vertical order. Each applicant is assigned three reviewers who pro-
vide a holistic rating of the abilities and fit of the applicant for the
graduate school. The assumption of a common organizational scale
that aligns judgments from the social and the natural sciences allows
to draw all review-triplets together as a field. Each applicant holds a
relative position towards and is determined by the others. This field
position is accompanied by a brief biographical summary formu-
lated by the admission administration, a written judgment by the
reviewers and, where applicable, a statement by a potential super-
visor. This positioning process is necessary to make the applicant
discussible on the admission site, in the preselection committee
meeting.5 Rather than just narrowing down information or reducing
it to the scale, the procedure adds new information from reviewers,
admission staff, and potential supervisors, and thereby renders
applicants from widely differing disciplines commensurable. The ap-
plicant has become requalified to again assume agency on the next
admission site.
At the preselection committee meeting, the decision-making is
structured through the vertical order of grades. They provide the
field structure that leads to a range of high-graded cases being
accepted on-site. Yet due to the careful requalification, the site tran-
scends this order. As all committee members can see more than the
grade before them, some applicants can enroll ‘speakers’ on their be-
half to challenge the gradings. These ‘speakers’ reopen and discuss
judgments from the first site:
At position 25 [Prof. Vandenberg] asks what exactly the
reviewer’s critique means: ‘That he has not published anything
yet?’ [Prof. Wellinghausen] recalls the applicant as ‘a thirty-year-
old with a pompadour [Fönwelle]’ whose manner had been ‘very
self-conscious, even swanky [großkotzig]’. That is why he had
noted missing publications as a negative point. He cites from the
applicant’s proposal: ‘I will shape tomorrow’s science. . .’ [Prof.
Wellinghausen] insists that despite this claim not even a [paper]
abstract exists. [Prof. Mitterlich] considers this to be ‘very suspi-
cious’. The applicant is rejected. (Observation transcript, first
meeting of selection committee, Gen-Ius Graduate School)
At the field site of the preselection committee meeting, a reviewer
and potential PhD-supervisor’s judgment is tested and reproduced in
front of an audience. Professor Vandenberg challenges Professor
Wellingshausen’s judgment that having published before starting a
PhD contradicts the identification of future excellence. Professor
Wellinghausen contextualizes his review by relating his own experi-
ence from the informal preselection interview (‘pompadour’) with a
formulation from the proposal (‘shape tomorrow’s science’), and the
CV (age, missing publications). The lack of publications in his CV is
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treated as a sign of authenticity, revealing the applicant as overstat-
ing his abilities. Drawing on information that is not accessible to all
members of the preselection committee, Professor Wellinghausen
argues for the applicant’s rejection which other committee members
then can confirm. The different elements are folded into the appli-
cant’s personality; they are brought together in order to cross-check
the applicant’s authenticity and confirm individual judgments
through a collective decision.
The informal meeting between a ‘pompadour’ and Professor
Wellinghausen here is distinguished from Plessner’s encounter with
Husserl. Instead of the initiation of an intimate relationship between
the master and his disciple, the applicant is tested on a strategic self
that the potential supervisor had derived from a dossier. Having
established their incongruence, they do not simply part, but the un-
willing supervisor has to write a review and possibly defend his deci-
sion before his colleagues from different disciplines on grounds that
are not related to the content itself. While Plessner was recognized
by Husserl because he had already published a book, this was nei-
ther a judgment of authenticity nor a competitive mark against other
applicants: Husserl already knew Plessner and Plessner sought
Husserl because he wanted to be affiliated with his school of
thought. The meeting was a source of reminiscences, not of later
field site enactment.
Different to common holistic review formats which directly lead
to an admission decision, the preselection committee’s decision
determines the applicants for in place interviews. All professorial
members of the graduate school are invited to participate in these.
Applicants present their proposal and are questioned in front of an
intimidating group of professors from different disciplines. This field
site again adds information to the selection process by having appli-
cants embody their respective dossiers under time constraints. The
committee observes 22 interviews in one day. In order to reach a
final decision by the end of the day and assure comparability, the
timeframe for the presentation and the questioning is meticulously
monitored and abided by. Again, the committee members follow the
selection pattern of the first two sites.
The criteria are that you have an excellent education. . . . That
you have an interest in interdisciplinarity, and maybe also al-
ready have shown some activities here. And that you can inspire
through your proposal, which you have to present. And I must
say, this inspiration through the proposal and the way, how you
present yourself; that is the bottom line. (Professor, Gen-Ius
Graduate School, Interview 19, lines 179–83)
The quote indicates a distinct pattern throughout the admission
device as the socio-technical arrangement of sites. By narrowing the
field of applicants from each site to the next, the authentic embodi-
ment of the applicant is judged by ever more committee members.
While at the first stage, only some of the possible future supervisors
saw applicants in person, they were then embodied on the preselec-
tion site as a narrative for all to hear when necessary. Now the
Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0
committee is opened to the faculty and all members have the oppor-
tunity to judge for themselves whether the applicants are able to ‘in-
spire through [their] proposal which [they] have to present’. The
‘person behind’ the proposal becomes manifest to be judged in a
competitive setting as true to the proposal. This setting also allows
to explicate how interdisciplinarity is tested. While it remains un-
clear how a distinct PhD proposal could be judged through
reviewers from different disciplines, the way committee members
address interdisciplinarity is by interrogating how applicants see
themselves. By having each committee member provide a grade,
interdisciplinarity is established by procedure. In stark contrast to
the master–disciple setting of the German university, the only person
excluded from the vote is the potential supervisor. The field site pro-
duces a decision for her or him to which s/he is expected to abide.
Despite the rational organizational framing, the decision is pre-
dominantly structured through time. Due to time constraints, the
committee members barely engage in discussions between inter-
views. They quickly provide grades which the admission staff assem-
bles in an excel table. After a long day of interviews with applicants,
the committee convenes to make a final decision. Instead of engag-
ing in an open discussion about applicants and decisions, the com-
mittee members turn to the excel table for it to decide for them.
The committee members study the Excel table. [Prof.
Heinemann] states that there is ‘no cut’ [in the rank order]. [Prof.
Pander] asks where they should make the cut. [Prof. Heinemann]
concedes that if they were to admit candidate 4 [ranked 7th] then
they would need to admit also candidate 8 [ranked 8th] because
both display the same score. He suggests to admit the first eight.
[Prof. Pander] asks about candidates 7 and 14 who share the
ninth position with the same score. He asks who is in favor of
admitting candidate 14. [Prof. Vandenberg] objects because it is
not a basic research project. [Prof. Heinemann] considers this not
to be an argument but the presentation had been bad and candi-
date 14 had shown no relation to Gen-Ius. [Prof. Deichmann]
asks if there are sufficient resources for eight grants. [Mrs.
Wolter, head of administration] responds that resources are con-
strained . . . [Prof. Kaiser] asks why candidate 14 has no relation
to Gen-Ius. [Prof. Heinemann] elaborates that the candidate had
not responded to the respective question. [Prof. Kaiser] takes this
personally [it is his candidate] and states that he could leave now
because he then neither has a relation to Gen-Ius. . . . [Prof.
Pander] and [Prof. Heinemann] conciliate that they are far from
implying this. . . . [Prof. Bernhard] argues that because candidate
14 has a transitional grant they could maybe admit her anyway.
. . . To have a grant cannot be a criterion, objects [Prof. Pander].
. . . [Prof. Kaiser] concedes that he could place candidate 14
somewhere else, it would not need to be Gen-Ius. . . . It is decided
to admit the first eight according to the ranking. (Observation
notes, second meeting of the admissions committee, Gen-Ius
Graduate School)
The calculative function of a simple charting device provides the
means for structuring the field of applicants. The excel table is
expected to perform a rank order of applicants in relation to an ap-
proximate intake number of eight or nine. As several candidates
share the same scores and thus position in the ranking or just differ
by decimals, there is ‘no cut’. Initially, the grades stir the discussion
to the point at which the ‘cut’ in the rank order should be made. The
discussion is then confined to candidates with identical grade scores
beyond the minimum intake number of eight. Given the two candi-
dates sharing the seventh place were within the range of funded
positions, they were admitted without further discussion. In
7
contrast, Candidates 7 and 14, both ranked ninth with the same
score, cannot be accepted both. Professor Pander aims to resolve the
issue with a vote on Candidate 14 but the discussion shifts to requa-
lifying the applicant. By sheer coincidence, it turns out that
Candidate 14 was a disciple one professor sought to place in the
school. The case thus highlights how through an alignment of field
sites the master–disciple-relationship is reframed in a field
agencement.
Professor Kaiser and the Professors Deichmann and Heinemann
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explicate two diverging rationales for the graduate school. For the
latter two, the graduate school is more than its parts: admission is
an authentification of personal qualities (bad presentation) and the
applicant’s willingness to embrace and integrate their research into
the school’s agenda to establish a new discipline. Professor Kaiser
on the other hand sees the school primarily as made up of its profes-
sorial parts. The graduate school’s research mirrors the research of
the ‘eminent men’ involved. He aims at placing his candidate in the
graduate school. Not only had he already accepted to supervise the
candidate but, as a brief exchange before the candidate’s interview
indicated, he seemed also to have co-inspired the candidate’s re-
search proposal. Through his intervention, he not only speaks for
the applicant but reattaches himself to her, adding a quality that is
not available for stand-alone applicants: to reject his candidate
means to reject not only his judgment about the candidate’s excel-
lence but also his research, and ultimately himself. The conflict is
resolved through Professor Kaiser’s factual withdrawal of the candi-
date from the competitive field site before risking a vote against
him. He draws on other resources to secure funding for his disciple.
Candidate 14 takes Candidate 7 with him who after the intervention
is not even discussed. The first eight candidates are accepted solely
based on grades, the discussion of the ninth is resolved through a
lack of resources, alternative placement options, and rule extension.
The discussion indicates that eminent men still take up powerful
positions. Though applicants may be judged independently as future
excellent researchers, some of them are still understood as attached
to a professor and disciples of a specific school of thought. Yet, the
distinct conditions, the supervisors’ exclusion from the vote on their
own candidate (which in the case of Candidate 14 might have made
the difference), and the need to discuss a candidate based on the
rules of a purified and competitive field site would transfer the emi-
nent men to the admissions pit. If he had not withdrawn, Professor
Kaiser would have become a quality of the applicant on which the
other committee members would have voted on. The field agence-
ment does not sieve out these candidates from academia but deflects
them into funding positions that are closer attached to the professor.
The distinct framing of applicants as acting in various qualities
across consecutive field sites and judged by professors themselves
has established a hiatus between eminent men and their disciples.
5. Fielding device II: academic grading practices,
commensurating topics, and renaming the
grades
Scheelheim Graduate School is a Graduate of School of Excellence
in the humanities and the social sciences. Again, the admission pro-
cess is structured through multiple levels of selection. It starts with a
formal process in which all applicants have to provide a CV, a letter
of motivation, a letter of recommendation, and a research proposal
within a strict format and page limit. A high number of applications
8 Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0
are turned down simply because they did not conform to the formal
criteria.
Similar to Gen-Ius, Scheelheim emphasizes the importance of the
research proposal to identify future research quality. The process
however differs. Rather than combining the documents for a holistic
review that authenticates an applicant’s motivation and claim,
Scheelheim singles out the proposal for evaluation. Purified from
any information about origin, (inter-)disciplinary background, and
motivation, the nameless applicants are enrolled as their research
projects in a blind review by professorial members of the faculty.
This anonymity is regularly contested by faculty, and their rumbling
will eventually surface later in the admission process. Yet at this
stage, ‘the reviewers . . . do not get the CV’ (Interview 6, head of ad-
ministration, line 325). They receive only the proposal that comes
with a set of predefined criteria and a grading scale.
There are key questions for the review. First, related to the re-
search question. Then, the theoretical-methodological framing.
Input. Is the topic connected to the discussion in the specific aca-
demic field? Is it feasible? That is, we require a detailed work
plan and timeline. And is the project feasible at all within a cer-
tain timeframe? (Head of administration, Scheelheim Graduate
School, Interview 6, lines 399–404)
Different to Gen-Ius, the criteria are made explicit. They resem-
ble general scientific standards known to the reviewers from other
selection procedures (e.g. professorial appointments, third-party
funded research). The criteria are graded on a 15-point-scale. In this
sense, the academic ability of each applicant is tested within a frame
that allows for qualitative comparison among cases. Despite this
framing, the sheer number of formally correct applications restricts
such a field-building exercise. Each proposal is reviewed by only one
person and compared to a maximum of two others. While the grades
operate on the same scale, the ratings do not qualify the applicants
comparatively. Their legitimacy derives not from the admission pro-
cedure itself but from their similarity with common grading practi-
ces in the social sciences and humanities. Derived from the
constitutionally granted freedom of teaching which effectively shel-
ters teaching from both external authorities and formal organiza-
tion, German mass higher education assumes a fictitious equivalence
in the grading by ‘eminent (wo)men’. Rather than integrating an
intersubjective component—as at Gen-Ius—admissions at
Scheelheim thus draws on the presumed professionality of each pro-
fessor to adequately grade any piece of discipline-specific work laid
out before her or him. The relationship might not be intimate, but
the professor alone can grade excellence if s/he sees it.
In order to allow for a preselection, the proposals then are
attached to the applicants’ dossiers. Score and review as well as a
short profile compiled by admission staff requalify the applicant to
allow for a setting in which all applicants can be compared competi-
tively. These dossiers are distributed among a preselection commit-
tee of 10 members, representing different academic status groups
and disciplines. Like at Gen-Ius, the committee selects the candi-
dates for the interviews.
During the break, the dean [a committee member] says that be-
cause of the sheer amount of applications she could not have
read all of the 181 reviews [of the proposals], and had therefore
sorted out the applications with the worst evaluations. ‘If a pro-
ject scores in all areas only three [of 15] or less points there is no
chance that it will pass’. However, the reviewers would handle
the grading scale differently so that it’s simply bad luck for some
applicants if they get an especially strict reviewer. She would
double-check those with exceptionally bad grades (zero points).
(Observation transcript, first meeting of selection committee,
Scheelheim Graduate School)
Different to Gen-Ius, the grades do not institute a common order
from which those to be invited for interviews are picked. Each com-
mittee member assembles a list of nine candidates and seven substi-
tutes for the preselection meeting. While acknowledging that each
proposal is qualified ‘differently’, the sheer number of applicants
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makes the committee member turn to the common grading scale to
narrow the field of applicants. It is herself who transforms a grade
into the decisive structuring quality of the field: the better the grade,
the higher the applicant’s ability to achieve future excellence
(defined along the three criteria of the reviews). Other members
with less time restrictions or a deeper distrust in grading practices as
the dean might have used different criteria to structure the field of
applicants. By accepting graded academic quality as a backbone for
selection, the applications are reduced to a formal frame that
neglects the specificity of the research proposal. Through the com-
mensuration process, a research project that for example investi-
gates the social effects of 19th century building law in Bavaria is
positioned against one on the diffusion of global diplomacy practi-
ces. From an organizational viewpoint, the core issue of a disserta-
tion, its novelty, or creativity that plays such a decisive role for the
master to accept his or her disciple, is subjected to a score and post-
poned for later iteration. Indeed, it is likely that the dean did scrutin-
ize the applicants she put on her shortlist, but the procedure
exemplifies the organizational distance that arises from a committee
which selects applicants who will not necessarily be supervised by
those making the decisions. Most applicants remain nameless and
one-dimensional as a grade. Only those that enter the shortlist are
unfolded, scrutinized, and tested holistically.
Independent of the field-structuring ability of the academic
grade, the focus on the proposal in the first stage influences how
applicants are addressed for preselection. In the committee discus-
sions, first in three subgroups and then in the plenary, the applicants
are enrolled as abbreviations of their proposal titles (like ‘building
law’ or ‘diplomacy’). Despite being rejoined by their personal
names, applicants maintain to be the novelty, originality, or creativ-
ity of their research projects. What initially was a metrologically
constructed field turns into a veritable social field during the discus-
sion in which documents perform an interactive agency of the appli-
cants. Beyond stabilizing the comparative structure of a field, the
three subgroups’ shortlists overlap in such a way that they coinci-
dentally match the threshold (28) for the number of interviews. The
shortlists further structure the field as the committee decides without
further discussion to take the next eight rank positions as substi-
tutes. Through the interaction of grades, cascades of restricted short-
lists, document agency, and the comparison of a decreasing number
of applicants the admission device has reduced the applicants with-
out the need of the committee to finalize a collective decision.
The interviews take place for three days in front of the whole
committee. In 40-minute-timeframes, the performance of each appli-
cant is authenticated against the schemes the members have con-
structed of them through the dossiers. In view of the committee, a
document-based field of applicants materializes. It spans a compara-
tive frame across individual performances.
The day after the interviews, the committee reconvenes to reach
a collective decision on whom to enroll. Against the administration’s
Research Evaluation, 2022, Vol. 00, No. 0
advice to ensure transparency, the professorial committee members
negate formal criteria and decision schemes and carry forth the hol-
istic perspective the interviews had established: ‘We want to talk
about names—now!’ (observation transcript, second meeting of se-
lection committee, Scheelheim Graduate School). Having material-
ized as persons in the interviews, the applicants cease to be
addressed by their topic and are called by their names. This is mir-
rored by the grading scale that is used in the final discussion.
Different to Gen-Ius, Scheelheim does not operate with grade points
but with letters. Differences are not metrical but ordinal: A (accept),
B (to be discussed), and C (reject). This form of selection is much
more aligned to a holistic admission as it obliges the committee to
discuss those that are not clearly rated as A or C. Consequentially,
the discussion in the committee is extensive—all ‘names’ are now on
the table. Confronted with the same problem of two ‘equally quali-
fied’ applicants like at Gen-Ius, again the alignment to the principles
of the school is discussed. However, here the discussion deflects
from the project itself to ascriptive criteria.
Professor Boerne argues that candidates 3 and 16 are equally
qualified so this would be a case for applying ‘other’ criteria. It is
a ‘pity’ that both are not female. Candidate 16 is an international
PhD student, but the adequate representation of the disciplines
[involved in the school] is also important. . . . Professor Epstein
elaborates that candidate 16 is a ‘very fast worker’ and ‘very
young’—this shows how fast he has acquired knowledge but also
that he surely will get further opportunities for a grant. In the
end the discipline is important, too, which speaks for candidate
3. (Observation transcript, second meeting of selection commit-
tee, Scheelheim Graduate School)
The quote shows that within the frame of the field site, ascriptive
criteria are transformed into a field specific merit. The disciplinary
affiliation of Candidate 3 beats the personal quality of the ‘very fast
worker’ Candidate 16. While here no affiliations to ‘eminent men’
in the committee are visible, criteria decide about admission that are
detached from a discipline-specific master–disciple relationship and
attached to positioning practices of the school which casts itself as
gender equal, international, and interdisciplinary. Not least because
these criteria had co-valuated the school as excellent in the
Excellence Initiative.
6. Discussion: field agencements of organized
admission
The two cases explicate how graduate school admission processes
operate as devices. The devices draw together multiple sites at which
in situ various parts of applicants’ dossiers or applicants themselves
are evaluated. In situ means that the evaluation is not preconceived
but dependent on the distinct interplay of criteria that qualify a pro-
posal or the interplay of documents of a dossier and individual per-
ceptions. The sites are aligned in such a way that earlier site-based
decisions qualify applicants to be competitively compared at the
next site. The choices made on each site show that both cases war-
rant very different results, even if applied to the same group of appli-
cants. The number of in situ decisions increases the contingency of
the procedure. While Gen-Ius emphasizes authentication proce-
dures—possibly because research proposals do not have the same
importance in the natural sciences—Scheelheim explicitly excludes
everything from the review on the first site that is not derived from
9
the research proposal. Only at the preselection meeting is the pro-
posal translated into a quality of the applicant.
Thus, not every site constructs a field among applicants, but it
provides evaluations that at a later stage qualify applicants as actors
in a distinctively engineered social field. Despite multiple differences
across the cases and sites, four common processes can be identified.
The first purifies a social space to allow for comparison (purifica-
tion) and the second structures and engineers qualities of applicants
to characterize and compare them against each other (qualification).
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Through a set of formatted devices, time restrictions, practices of
commensuration, and metrical/ordinal gradings, a common selec-
tion space is purified to allow that applicants with highly specialized
research endeavors and across disciplines can be competitively
selected as carriers of future excellence. Third, each site institutes a
distinct form of situated agency towards being selected that is attrib-
uted to applicants in this social field (agentification). Fourth, while
each site to some degree has its own way of imagining a field among
applicants, their alignment and order allow to successively build the
perception among those selecting that the applicants indeed have the
qualities they are weighing and that these are the decisive qualities
for estimating future excellence (authentication). True to holistic
perceptions of Gestaltpsychologie, fragmented forms of agency
allow to adequately evaluate the ‘person behind’ the documents,
grades, and (embodied) performances. While none of the committee
members are Gestaltpsychologists, social-psychological field
theory’s way of explaining social interaction has inspired assessment
centers and holistic reviews, which again has left traces of validity
from which the graduate school members draw. They believe in the
facticity of the field of applicants and the transcendence of their
choices despite it being built only for this purpose.
The admission device thus organizes access to a competitive so-
cial field of applicants that transcends the distinct local purpose. In
correspondence with sociological and psychological approaches that
likewise impose such frames for analytic reasons, we understand this
polymorphic process as field agencement.
Paradoxically, it is the enormous organizational effort to artifi-
cially make a field among applicants visible and comparable that
legitimizes the procedures. In the sense of triangulation, each site
enhances the gaze at the field of applicants to allow for a valid selec-
tion. Crucially, none of the schools reflects whether the selection
process does indeed identify future excellence. Not least because
both processes lack any agreed upon objective criteria—such as in
placement records or cognition tests—to which excellence could be
attributed. In fact, this procedure allows to maintain the role of
‘eminent (wo)men’. Their professional role in the university allows
for single grading, competitive decision-making on applicants, and
even overthrowing predefined selection criteria, as Scheelheim
shows. Both cases demonstrate that the field agencement does not
only establish legitimacy for fielding admissions to identify excel-
lence but also folds the applicants into abilities of the school they
are enrolled in. They thereby confirm the school’s position in the
competitive field of otherwise non-comparable graduate schools
that had made Scheelheim and Gen-Ius excellent in the first place.
7. Conclusion
The organizational effort and the emphasis on recruiting outstand-
ing future researchers returns excellence to the spotlight. While the
worldwide diffusion of the graduate school model makes doctoral
10
education look similar across the globe and among increasingly
rationalized universities, the cases discussed here show that there is
not a common understanding for selecting the best PhD students.
Each example institutes an admission device that operates on its
own logics: across the schools the criteria are specified according to
the local setting and disciplinary traditions.
But compared to the way Husserl approached his disciple in an
intimate paternalistic way and as a potential follower of his school,
the cases display strong commonalities. The admission devices pur-
ify (1) a social space for selection, qualify (2) applicants as compar-
able social units of this space, provide them with a site-specific
agency (3) for a shared but competitive goal—be selected—, and
mobilize social units across sites that consistently authenticate (4)
themselves through the sites as what they truly are. What for
Husserl would have been an outrageous way of identifying academic
excellence has become a valid form of selecting PhD students that
are less known to individual professors and come from different dis-
ciplines. For the lack of prices, this process does not institute a mar-
ket of some form, as Callon et al. have investigated across a range of
economic devices, but the manifestation of a social field—a field
agencement—of potential PhD students from which those most like-
ly to provide future research excellence can be sought. Fields do not
necessarily exist, as Karl Mannheim (1958: 349) pointed out, but
they are increasingly ‘built into’ an organized world of higher educa-
tion to mediate excellence competitions of various forms.
Notes
1. All sources in German have been translated to English by the
authors.
2. PhD admission is thus utterly different from appointment pro-
cedures for professorships where the adherence to formal regu-
lations is sanctioned by law and universities can be sued for
rule violation.
3. Federal Statistical Bureau, Personnel in Higher Education,
Fachserie 11 Reihe 4.4.
4. https://worldcoffeeevents.org/evolving-the-wbc-2016/
5. The committee selects the candidates for interviews.
Acknowledgements
We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their effort and their comments
that have been extremely helpful for clarifying and sharpening our argument.
We would also like to thank the editors Julian Hamann, Anna Kosmützky,
and Frerk Blome as well as Jelena Brancovic for commenting on earlier ver-
sions of this article.
Funding
This article is based on research conducted within the project “Elite
Formation and Universities” as part of the Research Unit “Mechanisms of
Elite Formation in the German Educational System” (FOR 1612), funded by
the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Conflict of interest statement. None declared.
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