Dill / Beerkens Public Policy for Academic Quality

Analyses of Innovative Policy Instruments
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-90-481-3754-1
Verlag: Springer Netherland
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 30, 271 Seiten, eBook

Reihe: Higher Education Dynamics

Over the last decade the structure of higher education in most countries has undergone significant change brought about by social demands for expanded access, technological developments, and market forces. In this period of change the traditional concerns with access and cost have been supplemented by a new concern with academic quality. As a consequence, new public policies on academic quality and new forms of academic quality assurance have rapidly emerged and swiftly migrated across continents and around the globe. The growing public debate about academic quality assurance within and across countries however has not always been well informed by analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of these new policy instruments. The Public Policy for Academic Quality Research Program (PPAQ) was designed to provide systematic analyses of innovative external quality assurance policies around the world. This volume presents the fourteen analyses of national policies on academic quality assurance conducted as part of the PPAQ Research Program utilizing the knowledge of informed international scholars. Each policy analysis examines the policy goals, implementation problems, and impacts of these newly developed national quality assurance instruments. The book concludes with an assessment of the lessons learned from these collected policy analyses and outlines the framework conditions that appear essential for assuring academic standards in the university sector.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dill, David D.

Beerkens, Maarja

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Professional (Self) Regulation of Academic Quality.- External Examiner System in the UK: Fresh Challenges to an Old System.- The Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) in the USA.- Market Regulation of Academic Quality.- The CHE University Ranking in Germany.- The US National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).- The Course Experience Questionnaire, Graduate Destination Survey, and Learning and Teaching Performance Fund in Australia.- National Report Card on Higher Education in the USA.- State (Direct) Regulation of Academic Quality.- The Australian Qualifications Framework.- Subject Benchmarking in the UK.- Subject Assessments for Academic Quality in Denmark.- Education Quality Audit as Applied in Hong Kong.- The German System of Accreditation.- The Accreditation and Quality Processes of the General Medical Council in the UK.- Contracting for Quality Improvement and Financing in Public Universities of Catalonia, Spain.- The National Assessment of Courses in Brazil.- Reflections and Conclusions.

Leseproben

"Chapter 2 External Examiner System in the UK: Fresh Challenges to an Old System (p. 21-22)

Richard Lewis

Introduction

In the mid-1970s I visited the United States for the first term to serve as a visiting professor in a large state university. I had no real knowledge of the US system of higher education and had no idea of the basis of grading. When I sought the advice of the chairman of the department, his words were to get out of town before the results were published.

I have no idea whether this was a typical attitude in the United States at the time or whether my chairman was untypically insensitive to the needs of his students. But what I did learn was the power of the individual instructor over the grading of students, a power which did, and probably still does, exist in a good number of other countries.

This was to someone brought up in the British tradition an unpleasant shock. In the UK the grading of students is very much a collective exercise involving not only other faculty members from one’s own institution but also faculty members from other institutions – the external examiners – the subject of this chapter. The system is not unique to the UK as it is used in other Commonwealth countries, while aspects of it can also be found in a number of other European countries such as Denmark.

This chapter will, however, be restricted to the UK experience. The external examiner system works at both research and taught degrees, but this chapter will concern itself with taught degrees. In order to understand the role that external examiners play in assuring quality in the UK, it is necessary to understand the national system of external quality assurance. The UK System of External Quality Assurance in Higher Education All higher education institutions in the UK in receipt of public funding are subject to the Quality Assurance Agency in Higher Education (QAA).

Institutions are also subject to a range of professional associations who recognise or accredit certain programmes of study, mainly those of a professional or vocational nature, that are not unlike the specialised accreditation agencies in the United States. The QAA is owned by the organisations that represent the heads of UK universities and colleges (Universities UK, Universities Scotland, Higher Education Wales and the Standing Conference of Principals). It describes itself as being independent of UK governments (QAA 2005, p. 5), but this is, perhaps, not an entirely fair description.

The legislation that underpinned the creation of the four UK higher education funding bodies (covering England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) contains the provision that the funding bodies must ensure that there are adequate quality assurance systems in force covering the institutions which they fund. Prior to the establishment of the QAA in 1997, the funding councils were themselves directly involved in quality assurance, but they now contract the QAA to do the work on their behalf.

Thus, the QAA is in a contractual relationship with a government agency, and it is clear that the government can influence QAA policy and even formulate their policy. This point was demonstrated in 2001 when there was pressure from the universities to lighten the very onerous quality regime that was then in place. The announcement that the system would be changed, the nature of which will be described later in this chapter, was made by the then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, David Blunkett, rather than the chairman or chief executive of the QAA (Brown 2004). As will be described later, the government continues to influence the development of quality assurance including the changing role of external examiners."