Enhancing quality in higher education: international perspectives (original) (raw)
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Land, R and Gordon, G (eds.) Enhancing Quality in Higher Education: international perspectives. Routledge. Oxford., 2013
Over the last decade, higher education institutions in Europe have been encouraged to develop ‘a culture of quality’ in student education. The term enjoys a prominent position in the EUA European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance and a number of European and national projects have helped to tentatively define the ‘quality cultures’ territory and to offer examples of practice and recommendations for future work. No institution would choose to argue that a culture of quality is not part of its aspiration. However, higher education providers in many parts of Europe, including the UK, are facing considerable financial challenges and the impacts of fiscal constraint are already making an impact on the ways in which some universities choose to define education quality. When many higher education institutions are facing unprecedented financial challenges, can a distinctive culture of quality really be sustained and nurtured? What challenges do British universities face in defining and implementing a culture of quality? What cost considerations limit the value of educational strategies that pursue ‘quality cultures’?
Governing quality in European Higher Education: a comparison of three member states.
The changing face of European Higher Education has brought the issue of quality assurance into sharp focus. At a pan European level it has resulted in the introduction of the ESG Part 1 in 2009 and a plethora of national policies and codes of practice in individual countries across Europe. These policies and codes of practice have implications for the nature of Higher education governance at the institutional level and the role of the different stakeholders within the management of institutions. This paper utilises case study data drawn from three EU countries; Latvia, Poland and the United Kingdom and explores the extent to which quality assurance procedures, and in particular the ESG part 1, are embedded within Higher Education governance systems and frameworks in these countries.
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Lessons learned from two decades of Quality in Higher Education DRAFT
Quality in Higher Education was established in the early years of the quality revolution and has published 529 articles in the 21 annual volumes up to and including 2015. The journal was entitled quality in higher education to enable a focus on all aspects of higher education quality rather than just quality assurance. However, quality assurance issues loom large in the pages of the journal and about a quarter of all articles addressed external quality assurance. Nonetheless, throughout its history, Quality in Higher Education has avoided articles that primarily set out national quality assurance processes, preferring instead studies that explore the nature, impact of quality assurance or comparative studies. In similar vein, the journal tends not to publish studies based on a single institution unless they act as case study illustrations of wider internationally relevant concerns. From the outset the journal has been an international forum and contributions have come from North and South America, Australasia, Central and SouthEast Asia, Western Europe, Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Gulf States, Africa and the Asian sub-continent. Naturally, many articles give a perspective from the authors' own countries but they are selected on the basis of their generalisability. The articles have ranged from conceptual and pragmatic enquiries into the nature of quality in higher education through explorations of quality assurance systems to the impact of they have on student learning. This paper explores what has been learned from these three million words. Four things stand out: the monolithic approach to quality assurance; the failure to adequately explore impact of quality assurance; the dissonance between bureaucratic assurance processes and student learning; the cynicism of academics about the efficacy and value of assurance processes. In addition, two other recurrent issues are not explored here. They are, first, the perennial debate about accountability and improvement, which has been analysed widely not just in the journal but elsewhere and the issues are well rehearsed and need no repeating except to say that in quality assurance processes accountability has rather overwhelmed improvement. Second, is the highjacking of the conceptualisation of quality education by quality assurance: the notion of intrinsic quality has been engulfed by quality assurance to the extent that quality has come to mean the processes by which quality is assured rather than the essential quality of the higher education provision. The monolithic approach to quality assurance Broadly speaking there are four ways of undertaking quality assurance: audit, accreditation, assessment/inspection and external examination/national examination. The journal has attracted very little by way of commentary on assessment or inspection (Cook,
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