The most common is that there may be no link between why something is being assessed and the results. Although these stakeholders still hold higher education in high esteem, they want more concrete evidence that what is being promised is being delivered. Because people are increasingly coming to expect assessment data in all other areas of their lives, they no longer are content with the lack of assessment data related to higher education. Since reliance on assessment processes is unfounded, and since the discontent described in the last sentence is nothing more than a symptom of a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder induced by the proliferation of factoids in American culture, one would expect a Higher Education Report to offer advice and constructive suggestions for resisting the increased pressure that Fife mentions and for educating the public about the limitations of computers and data processing. Assessment is a fact of life.
Fife takes the view that forces behind assessment are just too strong.
Since you can't beat them, you must join them. To faculty members who want to preserve academic freedom, not to mention self-respect, this may seem somewhat defeatist. Fife sees it as simply realistic. Recall that there is no connection between what an assessment process is supposed to find out and the actual results of performing it. The accuracy of the assumptions, the careful linking of these assumptions with the process, and the interpretation of the findings depend on who is involved in the assessment process.