Does the Emperor Have the Right (or Any) Clothes? The Public Regulation of Higher Education Qualities over the Last Two Decades

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that the public higher education ‘quality assurance’ systems which have been erected over the last 20 years or so rest on flimsy public policy and intellectual foundations. It asks if input/output relationships in higher education can be identified to the extent implied by current models of public higher education ‘quality assurance’. The article proposes a moratorium on any further development and extension of public higher education ‘quality assurance’ systems until several fundamental issues have been satisfactorily addressed. It calls for a new higher education performance evaluation paradigm in which the standards achieved by new graduates in areas such as logical thinking are the prime candidates for independent validation.

Keywords:

• quality assurance
• qualifications frameworks
• best practice
• minimum standards
• quality assurance agencies
• four stage model
• student complaints
• graduate attributes