Feeding the Beast or Improving Quality?: Academics' perceptions of quality assurance and quality monitoring

Opportunities to study and explain academics' responses to the growth of external quality monitoring and the extension of institutions' own quality systems have remained largely unexploited. Based on a single-site case study of a university sector college (NewColl), the paper highlights the merits of close-up study in enabling questions to be posed that other approaches are not as well placed to address. With the aid of interview data, the 'implementation gap' between the intentions underpinning 'quality policy' and the actual outcomes is examined. A number of dimensions of the 'implementation gap' are identified, each deriving from situational factors affecting how academics view external and internal quality monitoring systems and frameworks. It is argued that if academics are to remain pivotal in efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning, then more attention needs to be paid, by institutions and external quality bodies, to the importance of the conditions and context of academics' work. Otherwise, quality monitoring is liable to be invested with a 'beast-like' presence requiring to be 'fed' with ritualistic practices by academics seeking to meet accountability requirements.