The idea of quality in higher education: a conceptual approach

Abstract

The paper suggests that the idea of quality in higher education is ideologically constructed and conducted. In a spiral of mutual reinforcements, quality regimes naturalise experience, while the theories of that practice legitimise the naturalness of ‘quality’. I shall suggest that quality regimes provide too narrow readings of higher education. The central concepts, which I propose to use – discourse and power – emphasise the connectedness of ideology and quality in higher education. In particular, I suggest that the ideological character of the idea of quality in higher education is evident in discourses – which themselves are interlinked in networks. These discourses and networks are backed up by power and this helps to sustain their ideological character. Thus, this paper attempts two things: to outline a conceptual framework concerning the ideological character of the idea of quality in higher education and to draw attention to the organisation of that ideological formation.

Keywords:

• discourse
• ideology
• higher education
• quality assurance
• quality enhancement

Notes

1. Bernstein (1977) talks about descriptive and analytic languages. Descriptive language (as its name indicates) describes what is (rather) obvious to anyone, while the analytic language offers an insight, an analysis of what is being described.

2. Unless stated otherwise, the quotes in this and the next section of the paper are from interviews that I conducted for my doctoral thesis, ‘The Legitimation of Quality in Higher Education’ (Filippakou, 2009).