![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
Proponents of the concept of the audit culture in UK higher education argue that from the late 1990s onward audit functioned as a form of power control and had a profound effect on academics and their work. Such arguments continued to be made into the early 2000s. Since then, however, the level of external scrutiny surrounding UK academics' teaching has decreased. This paper presents a case study of academics at a pre-1992 university to examine how they perceived the audit culture and audit-related quality assurance mechanisms. This paper reveals that nearly two-thirds of those interviewed considered audit and quality assurance mechanisms as a bureaucratic practice that had little impact on their work. Only about one-third found the audit useful for improving undergraduate classroom teaching practice, particularly increasing academics' awareness of the importance of good teaching.
Notes
1. This is a major feature of higher education in the UK and a key mechanism for ensuring that standards are maintained and comparable across higher education.
2. It is a national initiative across all publicly funded higher education institutions in the UK. It aims to gather the feedback on the quality of students' courses and helps inform the choices of future applicants to higher education. The first full-scale survey took place in 2005.
3. They offer the only means of obtaining a license to practice a particular profession. Its accreditation may exempt graduates of the programme from further examination or assessment for membership.
4. It is a principal means of making institutions in the UK accountable to the quality of their research. It produces quality profiles for each submission of research activity an institution makes. The quality profiles are used to determine monetary grants for research to the institution.