This issue comprises papers that explore some of the core challenges for contemporary quality assurance in higher education. The papers, which are from diverse regions, range from reflections on the meaning of quality assurance to the impact of quality processes.
The notion that quality means different things to different people is well established but how this works out in practice is not always clear. In his paper focusing on the Austrian experience, Oliver Vettori explores the professional discourse on quality assurance in higher education. Vettori argues that by overlooking latent and implicit meanings of quality assurance, there is a danger that contradictions and potential conflicts will also be missed. The way in which quality is understood and defined therefore remains a key issue in contemporary debates on quality in higher education.
Stakeholder perceptions and understandings of quality have long attracted the attention of scholars in quality but they have largely focused on the views and experiences of students and academics. In contrast, the views of quality managers have seldom been explored. In a paper that uses the case of Chile, Judith Scharager Goldenberg explores the views of quality held by quality managers. This paper argues that quality for Chilean quality professionals is primarily about meeting specific external requirements and internal goals. The question, however, is whether this approach ignores notions of genuine improvement to the experience of learners and teachers.
Entrenched attitudes can also be seen in the ways in which the quality of graduates is measured. In a paper that focuses on three disciplines in Norwegian universities, Joakim Caspersen and Jens-Christian Smeby explore how grades relate to different measures of self-reported learning outcomes in a range of academic disciplines. This paper argues that self-reported learning outcomes and grades are influenced by different factors. Self-reported learning outcomes relate to students’ engagement with their learning and indicate that they use effective educational practices. Grades, in contrast, relate to students’ backgrounds, that is, that self-reported learning outcomes measure individual gain or value added. This has important implications for how learning outcomes in higher education are measured.
A consistent and growing area of concern in higher education is how to measure the quality of cross-border programmes. In this issue, two articles address this concern. In a paper that takes the perspective of the UK quality assurance agency, Fabrizio Trifiro explores the challenges and limits to cross-border cooperation in the quality assurance of transnational education. In a paper focusing on cross-border higher education in southern Africa, Raphael Jingura and Reckson Kamusoko explore ways of enhancing regulatory cooperation within the Southern Africa Development Community. The paper identifies the main areas of focus as people mobility, institutional and programme mobility, accreditation and registration as well as recognition of academic credentials.
This journal has, since its inception, encouraged reflection on the impact of quality processes in higher education. In this issue, Pham Thi Huong examines the impact of institutional accreditation on institutions in the Vietnamese context. The paper reports that the process was felt by staff to be useful in helping institutions become more aware of themselves and that it raises an institution’s prestige. At the same time, the process was felt to be burdensome and costly whilst not resulting in significant change. The paper argues that a lack of institutional autonomy and competence of the review team were barriers to any attempts to improve quality of higher education in Vietnam.
All of these papers highlight three key tensions in quality assurance: how quality is measured; how to recognise different assumptions about quality; and how to ensure that quality processes have impact. Underpinning much of this, however, is the fundamental tension between quality assurance process and a genuine desire for improvement to the experiences of the key stakeholders in higher education. These have been a fundamental part of the narrative of quality assurance in higher education since the 1990s and continue to be so.