Open access as a mechanism for the acceleration of higher education

An interesting extract from Social Media in Academia, by George Veletsianos, conveying one reason why I’m instinctively cautious about open access. From loc 614-631:

empirical evidence relating to citation metrics indicates that OA articles may be cited earlier than NOA articles (Eysenbach, 2006; Zawacki-Richter, Anderson, & Tuncay, 2010), suggesting that OA may allow faster access to scholarly work and thereby accelerate scholarly dissemination and development.

As he goes on to write:

Such data may help scholars gain a more nuanced understanding of the impact and reach of their scholarship, provide transparency to the research community, and allow richer depictions of a scholar’s influence.

It’s not obvious to me that these are intrinsically good things. Whose agenda do they serve?