Whose Quality Conventions? The Application of Convention Theory in Higher Education

Abstract

Internationally, demands for greater certainty over the quality of higher education are multiplying. This article argues that convention theory offers insights for considering quality in higher education in an increasingly market‐based system. Examples from the Australian higher education system are used to show how quality conventions can be mapped at varying system levels and across varying actors and how the existing taxonomy of quality in higher education can be located in a wider social and economic framework. It is suggested that this approach assists in identifying those quality conventions which may become dominant across stakeholder groups.

Notes

1. Philanthropic alumni could be regarded as investors or even purchasers if it is accepted that they receive some cultural capital from their exchange. However, they may have more certainty over the products they are investing in than other stakeholders.

2. The answer may depend on the definition of non‐market that is used, as it is certainly the case that even where HEIs are owned by the state or where students have little choice of institution, there is keen interest among stakeholders in evaluating the quality of higher education services provided.

3. There are of course also assertions that the civic convention of open enquiry is being weakened through various forms of sponsored research.

4. As “traditional” HEIs can readily replicate many of these efforts at horizontal differentiation (although not all) if they choose to, the market advantages gained by other HEIs through this means are likely to be short term, although they certainly encourage innovation across higher education sectors.

5. It can be observed that this analysis points to some possible gaps in the practice of industrial conventions of quality, to the extent that industrial conventions concentrate on the protection of standards and measurement of outcomes. Efforts to strengthen the internal collegial (“civic”) quality conventions of academia and the personally transformative (“inspired”) role of higher education may suffer from comparative neglect (cf. Harvey & Newton, 2005), although quality audit is able to take account of both.