Lee Harvey

New realities: The relationship between higher education and employment

Abstract The paper addresses one aspect of the ‘New Realities’ of higher education: the employer‐higher education interface. It explores the development of the ‘employability’ agenda in higher education, examines the nature and implication of organisational change for graduates and assesses what attributes graduates will need in the next decade. Flexible organisations need flexible, and increasingly empowered employees; that in turn calls for transformative and empowering learning. The way that higher education might address this, particularly in the context of lifelong learning, is explored.

Transforming quality evaluation

This paper outlines the preponderant approaches to external quality evaluation, including the purpose, focus, object, rationale, and methods of external evaluations. Accountability, compliance and, in some countries, control are much more frequent rationales for external monitoring than improvement. Research on the impact of quality monitoring is difficult because it is impossible to control all relevant factors to be able to map causal relationships. Arguably, such an endeavour is a positivist device that ignores the complexity and the wider socio‐political context of the quality phenomenon. Nonetheless, there is some impact research, which might be characterised as overview studies or close‐up studies. These studies reinforce the view that quality is about compliance and accountability and has, in itself, contributed little to any effective transformation of the student learning experience. Where changes to the student experience have taken place, this has arguably been the result of factors other than the external quality monitoring: at best the existence of the latter provides a legitimation for internally‐driven innovation. If quality evaluation is to be transformed to make it transforming it is time to reclaim quality evaluation from opportunistic politicians, re‐establish trust in higher education and focus attention on internal processes and motivators. Instead of politically acceptable methods, quality evaluation needs to adopt appropriate research methodologies. The paper will conclude by exploring the conditions under which quality evaluation might be transformed.

Fifteen Years of Quality in Higher Education

ABSTRACT The review explores 15 years of contributions to Quality in Higher Education. In this first part the review focuses on external processes and factors, both national and international. The developments in a wide range of countries are reported and evaluated. The concept of quality should not be detached from purpose and context and quality has political undertones. A key issue for countries more recently introducing quality systems, especially less developed countries, is the transferability of systems established elsewhere in the world. Also apparent is how conceptions of quality assurance that originated in North West Europe and the USA have been the basis of developments around the world and how little variation there is in the methods adopted by quality‐assurance agencies. The proliferation of quality‐assurance agencies is being followed by a mushrooming of qualifications frameworks and the growing pressure to accredit everything, even if it is a poor means of assuring quality and encouraging improvement. The overall tenor of the contributions was that external quality evaluations are not particularly good at encouraging improvement, especially when they had a strong accountability brief. An essential element in this failure is the apparent dissolution of trust. Another issue is the use of industrial models and TQM in particular, which contributors, on the whole, regarded as of little use in the higher education setting. Although, not surprisingly, some contributions showed that institutional management impacts on quality. However, national performance indicators are viewed with suspicion, especially when they simply measure the easily measurable. Further, ranking systems are critiqued for their validity, methodology and the inadequate information they provide for students.

A History and Critique of Quality Evaluation in the UK.

Purpose – To provide a history of the emergence of quality systems from the mid‐1980s. To show how quality became a primary policy concern in higher education policy. To map the development of quality processes and raise questions about dominant approaches and express concerns for the future.Design/methodology/approach – Historical document analysis.Findings – The problems in institutionalising quality are analysed and it is concluded that the British system of quality monitoring failed to engage with transformative learning and teaching.Practical implications – As the UK developments guided many other countries into developing a system of quality, the UK history of the emergence and development of quality processes 1985‐2005 is of interest to international readers. It identifies both good practice and what to avoid.Originality/value – The historical analysis reveals how quality evaluations were guided as much by political pragmatism as rational evaluation.

The power of accreditation: views of academics1

Accreditation in higher education is examined by drawing on the experiences of academics and managers in Britain, the United States and Canada. The qualitative comments are used to deconstruct the notion of accreditation. Accreditation processes, it is argued, are not benign or apolitical but represent a power struggle that impinges on academic freedom, while imposing an extensive bureaucratic burden in some cases. Accreditation can also act as a restraint on innovation and run counter to pedagogic improvement processes. There is a taken‐for‐granted underlying myth of an abstract authorising power, which legitimates the accreditation activity. This myth of benign guidance is perpetuated by the powerful as a control on those who provide the education and represents a shift of power from educators to bureaucrats.Accreditation in higher education is examined by drawing on the experiences of academics and managers in Britain, the United States and Canada. The qualitative comments are used to deconstruct the notion of accreditation. Accreditation processes, it is argued, are not benign or apolitical but represent a power struggle that impinges on academic freedom, while imposing an extensive bureaucratic burden in some cases. Accreditation can also act as a restraint on innovation and run counter to pedagogic improvement processes. There is a taken‐for‐granted underlying myth of an abstract authorising power, which legitimates the accreditation activity. This myth of benign guidance is perpetuated by the powerful as a control on those who provide the education and represents a shift of power from educators to bureaucrats.

Student Feedback [1]

In the 1980s, feedback from students about their experience in higher education was a rarity. With the expansion of the university sector, the concerns with quality and the growing ‘consumerism’ of higher education, there has been a significant growth of, and sophistication in, processes designed to collect views from students. Following the Cooke Committee’s (HEFCE, 2002) announcement on information requirements for quality assurance in higher education in the United Kingdom, student satisfaction feedback has become an important element of the higher education quality process (Harvey, 2001a; HEFCE, 2001). This has been reinforced in the recent White Paper, The Future of Higher Education (DfES, 2003), which proposes better information for students including a new annual student survey. Other countries have versions of national student feedback including Australia, where the course experience questionnaire has been used for several years. Most higher education institutions, around the world, collect some type of feedback from students about their experience of higher education. ‘Feedback’ in this sense refers to the expressed opinions of students about the service they receive as students. This may include perceptions about the learning and teaching, the learning support facilities (such as libraries, computing facilities), the learning environment, (lecture rooms, laboratories, social space and university buildings), support facilities (refectories, student accommodation, health facilities, student services) and external aspects of being a student (such as finance, transport infrastructure). Student views may be collected in a variety of ways, including:

The End of Quality

This is a special issue reporting the outcomes of discussions and some of the papers presented at The End of Quality? seminar held in Birmingham, UK, in May 2001. The seminar discussion was structured around three themes, presented in an opening scene-setting keynote. The views of delegates about each theme are summarised below, under the scene-setting bullet points. In addition, there were keynote and parallel presentations and versions of these are also included in this volume.

Transforming Quality Evaluation: Moving On

The paper adapts and extends a proposal, made at the 26 th EAIR Forum in Barcelona in 2004, to transform quality evaluation. The original paper undertook a review and critique of existing systems of higher education quality review exploring the purpose, focus, object, rationale, and methods of external evaluations. It noted that accountability, compliance and, in some countries, control are much more frequent rationales for external monitoring than improvement. The paper argued for more evidence-based research to inform quality evaluation policy, although noting a relative paucity of research, especially on impact. The paper had, as its clarion call, the assertion that ‘If quality evaluation is to be transformed to make it transforming it is time to reclaim quality evaluation from opportunistic politicians, re-establish trust in higher education and focus attention on internal processes and motivators.’ This extension of the argument takes as read the need for research evidence to inform quality policy and explores three issues: methodology, implementation and the conditions under which quality evaluation might be transformed.

Rankings of Higher Education Institutions: A Critical Review

Ranking of higher education institutions has been with us for some time. In the USA, for example, the quality of graduate programmes has been evaluated via staff surveys since the 1920s and US News and World Report started publishing ‘America’s best colleges ranking’ in 1983. In the UK ranking tables appeared in the 1990s (Bowden, 2000). However, rankings of higher education have gained prominence in this decade. ‘Within only a few years, rankings have become an unavoidable part of academic life, for better or worse’ (RFSU, 2008).

An Assessment of Past and Current Approaches to Quality in Higher Education

THIS paper argues that, despite an increasing uniformity of approach to quality monitoring, there is little analysis of the rationale behind the methods because there is little exploration of what ‘quality’ is in a higher education context. Despite good intentions, quality monitoring has become over-bureaucratic and the potential for significant change has been hampered by a focus on accountability rather than improvement. Furthermore, the accountability focus, despite its onerous and somewhat oppressive burden, is a safe process for higher education because it does not consider the nature of learning or what is learned. By focusing on accountability, the transformative potential of quality monitoring is not fulfilled.