Quality and Standards: Clarity, Comparability and Responsibility

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses three central issues relating to quality and standards: clarity, comparability and responsibility. The issue of clarity is that we have reached a point of disjunction between the questions being asked by the public and the answers being provided by quality assurance professionals. The issue of comparability comes in two forms: comparing quality and standards between different universities; and comparing the standards of today with the standards of yesterday. The third issue is the question of who is responsible for judging standards. In response to these three issues, four potential approaches to measuring quality are discussed. First, a whole‐university approach to quality and standards is promoted. Second, it is argued that quality profiles per university are more valuable than a ranking in a quality league table. Third, it is important to distinguish between the supply side and the demand side of the knowledge economy. Fourth, it is vital to articulate an effective response to the charge that standards have dropped over time.

Keywords:

• clarity
• comparability
• quality
• responsibility
• standards
• quality profiling
• ranking

Acknowledgements

I first gave this paper, originally a lecture entitled ‘Quality and standards: Some issues and ideas’, as an invited keynote address at the Australian Universities Quality Forum, in Alice Springs, July 2009. I am indebted to David Woodhouse for the invitation. I would like to express my thanks to David Woodhouse, Peter Williams and David Eastwood for their comments on earlier drafts.