The role of universities in the determination of what counts as knowing and what it is to be knowledgeable is, at the start of the twenty-first century, a contested one. While universities and other higher education institutions frequently draw on Enlightenment understandings to define their role in this regard they are also, and perhaps increasingly, called upon to prepare students to fill performative roles in complex contemporary Western societies. These roles are shaped by many influences beyond the institution and call into question the place of the university as arbiter of what counts as knowing.

This paper considers the views of students studying in a New Zealand institute of technology. It draws on narrative data collected during in-depth, semi-structured interviews about the effect of the assessment régimes to which the students were subjected during the course of their degree study. These data suggest that students resist the authority of the academic to decide what they should know and value. It is argued that students privilege teaching and learning approaches they perceive as linked to professional ways of knowing over those designed by academics who students may perceive as acting outside the framework of the profession and, therefore, the performative roles for which they are preparing.

Keywords: Assessment; development of expertise; student views.