Cipes and Universidade do Porto

1
Cipes
IAUP XIV Triennial Conference The Challenge of
Globalisation and the Role of Higher Education.
Higher Education and Quality Assessment The many
rationales for quality
Alberto Amaral
Cipes and Universidade do Porto Bangkok and
Pattaya, Thailand 10-15 July 2005
2
Introduction
The IAUP XIV Triennial Conference focuses on The
Challenge of Globalisation and the Role of Higher
Education.
Cipes
The theme of this presentation, Higher Education
and Quality Assessment will be addressed from the
perspective of Globalisation and Higher Education.
Pattaya, 2005
How changes of the context surrounding higher
education, including globalisation, competition,
markets, new public management and borderless
education have contributed to the implementation
of quality assessment and accreditation
procedures?
1
3
The emergence of the evaluative State
Quality has remained for centuries an implicit
responsibility of the academe.
Cipes
The supreme authority, providing that it is
exercised in ways responsive to others, must
therefore continue to rest with the academics,
for no one else seems sufficiently qualified to
regulate the public affairs of scholars (Moodie
and Eustace (1974 233).
Pattaya, 2005
It was only after the early 1980s that quality
has become a central issue in higher education.
The state sector was the major employer of
university graduates and the need to ensure
equality of opportunities to all citizens when
competing for a public employment led to the
principle of legal homogeneity.
4
4
The emergence of the evaluative State
Cipes
The fact that the private sector has meanwhile
replaced the state as the main employer of
graduates has diluted the arguments in favour of
the legal homogeneity principle.
The emphasis on quality assurance and minimum
standards has replaced similarity of provision
and conditions.
Other factors have also contributed to the
emergence of the evaluative state. In the late
60s and early 70s the Welfare State model has
run into difficulties by accumulating a huge
public debt to meet the increasing financial
burden of social benefits, leading to the fiscal
crisis of the state.
Pattaya, 2005
5
5
The emergence of the evaluative State
Cipes
The beginning of the economic globalisation has
exacerbated the fiscal crisis, as multinationals
and finance have become freed from any national
state, no longer contributing a part of their
profits to refill the public fund.
One consequence of the fiscal crisis has been the
Welfare States loss of legitimacy. The Welfare
State has emerged as the big spender, responsible
for the wastage of very large financial resources
gulped down by inefficient and unfair social
policies.
Pattaya, 2005
At the same time, the demands of economic
competitiveness have begun to replace the
satisfaction of rising social expectations as the
rationale for increased access to higher
education.
6
6
The emergence of the evaluative State
Cipes
Economic difficulties and growing public concern
about the exhausted capacity of the Welfare State
to cope with growing and competing needs of
social systems, such as health, social security
and education.
Neo-liberal policies government intervention and
regulation were excessive, the Welfare State led
to inefficiency, wastage of money and unfair
sharing of resources.
Pattaya, 2005
The emergence of the market as solution for
these problems has made inevitable that the
autonomy of universities should be accompanied by
accountability as a means of demonstrating to
society that public money was well spent. And
accountability is obviously linked to quality
assessment.
7
7
Globalisation and higher education
Starting in 1944 with Bretton Woods trade
barriers have progressively been removed and a
global economy has emerged.
Cipes
Economic ideas en vogue today were developed in
the XVIIIth and early XIXth centuries.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) and the idea of the
invisible hand of the market.
Pattaya, 2005
David Ricardo (1772-1823), and the idea of
unrestricted trade and free commerce.
8
8
Globalisation and higher education
Cipes
Globalisation and New Right policies have had a
considerable effect upon education.
There has been an increasing colonisation of
education policy by economic policy imperatives.
Change of the traditional pact between the
university and society by shifting the emphasis
away from the social and cultural functions of
the university in favour of its economic function.
Pattaya, 2005
The changes taking place are not only structural
adjustments.
10
9
Globalisation and higher education
Cipes
There are changes of ideology and of values, and
significant changes in the relationship between
higher education institutions and the state.
Education is today considered more as an
indispensable ingredient for economic competition
and less as a social right.
Governments exert strong pressures over
institutions to make them more responsible to
outside demands and to ensure that education and
research are relevant for the national economy.
Pattaya, 2005
The Bologna process being implemented in Europe
also places a strong emphasis on the contribution
of higher education to the employability of
graduates.
11
10
Globalisation and higher education
Cipes
Traditional university governance has become the
target of fierce criticism.
The multi-secular tradition of collegial
governance is today considered inefficient and
corporative.
Models have been imported from the corporate
world.
The reinforced presence of external stakeholders
in university governance
Pattaya, 2005
Appointed Presidents with sound managerial
curricula have been replacing elected academics
at the rudder of the university vessel.
12
11
Globalisation and higher education
Development of academic capitalism.
Cipes
Market-like mechanisms of competition similar to
those prevailing in the marketplace.
Competition for funding, grants, contracts,
research, students...
Institutions should become more flexible, more
autonomous to respond to changes in the
organisational environment.
Pattaya, 2005
Economic globalisation has increased the role
played by market mechanisms in the provision,
steering and organisation of higher education..
Information on the quality of products is
necessary for the efficient performance of markets
13
12
The increasing presence of the market
Markets have assumed an increasing importance in
the regulation of the public sector.
Cipes
Competition has been regarded as the solution to
reform the sclerotic behaviour of public services
by forcing them to increase their efficiency.
In Europe the Bologna process is transforming
what were once state monopolies over academic
degrees into competitive international markets.
Pattaya, 2005
In a quasi-market goods or services, instead of
being bought by their final users, are bought by
an agent (in general a public agent) on behalf of
clients to whom these goods and services are then
allocated directly.
14
13
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
David Dill presents a operational definition of
the market (...) Formally speaking a market is
a means of organising the exchange of goods and
services based upon price, rather than upon other
considerations such as tradition or political
choice (David Dill 1997 168).
Pattaya, 2005
The efficient use of market regulation presents a
number of problems. For the allocation of goods
and services to be optimally efficient for the
larger society (Leslie and Johnson 1974) the
market needs to be perfectly competitive, which
implies a number of conditions. conditions
18
14
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
Both government and market regulation may lead to
inefficient action as it is well documented in
the literature.
Non-market or government failures are related to
the fact that sometimes the government and its
agencies are incapable of perfect performance in
designing and implementing public policy, because
of defects of representative democracy and
inefficiencies of public agencies to produce and
to distribute goods and services.
Pattaya, 2005
Market failures are the shortcomings of markets
when confronted with certain goods and
conditions, namely the production of goods that
show large externalities as is the case of
education.
20
15
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
Other source of market failures is the tendency
of a free market to build monopolies resulting in
inefficient outcomes.
Still other sources of market failures are the so
called market imperfections such as prices not
reflecting product scarcities and insufficient or
asymmetric information.
Pattaya, 2005
For the purposes of this presentation one will
focus the attention on the problems linked to
information.
21
16
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
The information problem is very acute in the case
of higher education, which has three simultaneous
characteristics
It is an experience good
It is a rare purchase
Pattaya, 2005
It has very high opting-out costs
23
17
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
In the case of pure commodities and/or search
goods, namely those frequently purchased, one can
get enough information for making reasonably
informed decisions.
In many cases one can even try or taste the good
before the purchase and if a bad decision is made
it is quite easy to buy an alternative product in
the next purchase.
Pattaya, 2005
Even in the case of marriage many have gone
through pre-marital experiences living together
before making things more irreversible.
In the case of experience goods and education
is one of them their relevant characteristics
can only be effectively assessed by consumption.
24
18
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
The second characteristic is the higher
educations low purchasing frequency. In most
cases a student enrols in a single study
programme throughout its professional life.
Even if life-long learning is becoming more
popular it consists in general of small modules
not full-length study programmes.
Therefore the consumer (student) cannot derive
market experience from frequent purchases.
Pattaya, 2005
The third characteristic is that it is in general
rather expensive to change to a different study
programme or institution, which means that opting
out may not be an easy option.
25
19
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
Students lack sufficient information about the
quality of academic institutions or programs to
make discriminating choices.
What they need is the measure of prospective
future earnings provided by alternative academic
programmes.
Even if this kind of data were available, many
students (or their families) would not use it,
which questions the validity of the rational
economic choices.
Pattaya, 2005
This is what David Dill calls the problem of
immature consumers .
26
20
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
In a recent publication Vossensteyn
states Because (potential) students are
uncertain about the actual contents of the study,
getting a degree and finding a proper job after
graduation, the decision to attend higher
education and to select a particular program is
surrounded with a lot of uncertainty.
psychological phenomena form a filter or a
mental framework through which students judge
financial incentives in relation to their study
choices.
Pattaya, 2005
27
21
The increasing presence of the market
The problem of immature students is the rationale
for the implementation of quasi-markets, rather
than consumer-oriented markets, for the
distribution of academic programs.
Cipes
It is assumed that the state through a government
agency is more capable of protecting the
interests of immature consumers than consumers
themselves.
The state is no longer a provider of higher
education but assumes a role as principal
representing the interests of the consumers by
making contracts with competing institutions.
Pattaya, 2005
This creates a quasi-market in which the state
becomes a purchaser of services from independent
providers, which compete with each other in an
internal market
28
22
The increasing presence of the market
The principal-agent dilemma how the principal
government can best motivate the agent
university to perform as the principal would
prefer, taking into account the difficulties in
monitoring the agents activities
Cipes
That is why governments have been introducing an
increasing number of performance indicators and
measures of academic quality.
Pattaya, 2005
Performance indicators suggested for education
are rather removed from the concept they intend
to measure, and most of them are linked either to
efficiency such as student/staff ratios, cost
per student, cost per degree awarded or to
effectiveness, such as number of graduations,
employment figures, etc.
29
23
The increasing presence of the market
Information used by students tends to be much
focused on academic reputation and prestige.
Cipes
Higher education is a positional good in the
sense that it provides students with a
competitive advantage when looking for
employment, social standing and prestige.
Positional competition is not about the intrinsic
content of education but its symbolic value. In a
competitive market educational quality is
subjectively defined. Quality tends to be
determined by where the status goods are found,
rather than status determined by quality The
quality of teaching and learning is incidental,
except as a post hoc rationalisation of elite
placement (Marginson 1998 84).
Pattaya, 2005
30
24
The increasing presence of the market
These problems legitimate a regulatory hand of
the government to promote consumer protection and
information (licensing, accreditation, quality of
goods and services).
Cipes
Better information is also important for producer
effectiveness.
Principals and student consumers may have
imperfect information about the quality of
academic programmes that is, the value added
they provide to the student and ultimately to
society but, because of the distinctive
properties of universities, the producers may
have imperfect quality information as well.
Because of traditions of academic autonomy and
specialisation, professors may also lack
sufficient information to judge the quality of
academic programmes and may fail to improve them
(Dill and Soo 2004 52).
Pattaya, 2005
31
25
The increasing presence of the market
Cipes
The rules of the market demand that producers
have decision-making freedom to compete and to
adapt to the new environment.
The emergence of the market in higher education
has gone hand in hand with increased
institutional autonomy to manage the daily life
of higher education institutions.
Pattaya, 2005
This shift of decision-making responsibility to
producers has had substantial implications for
institutional governance and management.
32
26
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
Any specific discussion of higher education
management needs to be set within the broader
context of New Public Management and related
concepts, such as new managerialism and
reinventing government (Osborne and Gaebler
1992), which have dominated public sector reform
over the last two decades.
Pattaya, 2005
The New Public Management has championed a vision
of public managers as the entrepreneurs of a new,
leaner, and increasingly privatised government,
emulating not only the practices but also the
values of business
33
27
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
Over the last two decades, the intrusion of the
rhetoric and management practices of the private
sector into higher education has led to important
changes in the operation of higher education
institutions.
It is within this context that traditional
criteria of social and cultural relevance of
higher education are seen as obsolete and
inefficient, progressively being replaced by
criteria of economic rationality.
Pattaya, 2005
Higher education institutions are forced to
explicitly demonstrate to society that they make
effective and efficient use of their resources
and that their activities are relevant to the
economy and the labour market.
34
28
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
Under new public management the public are
clients of government, and administrators should
seek to deliver services that satisfy clients.
In higher education, too, students are referred
to as customers or clients.
Pattaya, 2005
In most higher education systems quality
assurance and accountability measures has been
put in place to ensure that academic provision
meets client needs and expectations.
36
29
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
The movement, from the public good concept of
knowledge to one of commercialisation and
private ownership, challenges many traditional
academic values, particularly those associated
with how the institution should be structured and
controlled.
One of the consequences of the new public
management policies appears to have been a strong
attack on the professions, and specifically on
the academic profession.
Pattaya, 2005
The academy no longer enjoys great prestige on
which higher education can build a successful
claim to political autonomy.
37
30
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
One observes the gradual proletarianisation of
the academic professions an erosion of their
relative class and status advantages.
Patent policies also made faculty more like all
other workers making faculty, staff and students
less like university professionals and more like
corporate professionals whose discoveries are
considered work-for-hire, the property of the
corporation, not the professional.
Pattaya, 2005
The de-professionalisation of academics has
been coupled with a claim to professional status
by administrative staff.
38
31
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
Thirty years ago administrators were very much
expected to operate in a subservient supportive
role to the academic community, very much in a
traditional Civil Servant mould and in the
meetings of the academia they were expected to be
seen but not to be heard.
Today, managers for their part see themselves as
essential professional contributors to the
successful functioning of the contemporary
university.
Pattaya, 2005
NPM was supposed to provide that imperative drive
towards operational efficiency and strategic
effectiveness so conspicuously lacking in the
sclerotic professional monopolies and corporate
bureaucracies that continued to dominate public
life.
39
32
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
Micromanagement mechanisms that are increasingly
used by institutions in order to respond to
outside pressures.
Management control technologies include systems
for evaluation and performance measurement of
research, teaching and some administrative
activities, particularly those linked to finance.
Pattaya, 2005
The implementation of these systems occurs in
basic units, which are internally made
accountable for budget expenditure (eventually
decentralised) and for the results of evaluations
of teaching and research activities.
40
33
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
The emergence of the new public management and
the attacks on the efficiency of public services
including higher education has resulted in loss
of trust in institutions.
Martin Trow considers that every institution is
linked to its surrounding through some
combination of accountability, market and trust.
Pattaya, 2005
Accountability is defined as the obligation to
report to others, to explain, to justify,
answering questions about how resources have been
used, and to what effect.
42
34
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
The link of higher education to society through
the market is visible when support is provided to
a college or university in return for the
immediate provision of goods or services.
Trust is visible in the provision of support, by
either public or private bodies, without the
requirement that the institutions either provide
specific goods and services in return for that
support, or account specifically and in detail
for the use of those funds.
Pattaya, 2005
Accountability is an alternative to trust, and
efforts to strengthen it usually involve parallel
efforts to weaken trust. Accountability and
cynicism about human behaviour go hand in hand
43
35
New Public Management and the loss of trust
Cipes
The UK under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher
is a classical example of the withdrawal of trust
from the universities as a matter of government
policy rather than of changes of attitudes in the
broader society (Trow ibid). Martin Trow argues
that in UK the universities did not know how to
develop and then translate support in the society
at large into political support so as to be able
to defend themselves through the ordinary devices
of real politics in democratic societies.
Pattaya, 2005
44
36
Globalization, GATS, transnational providers
Cipes
In recent years a new phenomenon has emerged in
the higher education context borderless higher
education or transnational higher education.
There is not a unanimously accepted definition of
these terms.
For Yoni Ryan the term borderless higher
education refers to a range of interlocking
activities including e-learning, other forms of
transnational provision and new providers (e.g.
for-profit universities) that cross a variety
of borders, whether geographic, sectoral or
conceptual (Ryan 2002 1).
Pattaya, 2005
45
37
Globalization, GATS, transnational providers
Cipes
Whatever the definition it seems that pure
e-learning did not meet the expectations of
explosive growth as apparently there is only a
limited demand for online degree-granting liberal
arts programmes as the UK Open University
realised when it was forced to close down the
Open University United States.
Ryan attributes low student enrolment (with
exceptions such as University of Phoenix Online
and University of Maryland University College) to
a number of factors, the first two being employer
reluctance to accept the quality of online
programmes and the apparent resistance by many
students to the notion of exclusively online
education.
Pattaya, 2005
46
38
Globalization, GATS, transnational providers
Cipes
However, franchised curricula and overseas
campuses continue to develop very fast in
borderless higher education.
Examples of overseas campuses include the UKs
University of Nottingham in Malaysia and
DeMontfort University in South Africa,
Australias RMIT University in Vietnam (campus
expected to open in 2003) and Monash University
in Malaysia and South Africa. MIT has established
an alliance with Singapores two public
universities, focused on engineering education
online and collaborative research while Frances
INSEAD now operates a campus in Singapore (Ryan
2002 11).
Pattaya, 2005
47
39
Globalization, GATS, transnational providers
Cipes
in Greece there are about 130 non-official
institutions, enrolling 28 000 students in
Italy, 62 non-official institutions were
identified and there are also a large number of
franchising agreements and educational brokers
in Spain, more than one hundred institutions of
the type are in operation. Other European
countries included in the survey also show this
phenomenon, although at a smaller scale in the
UK, about five percent of the students were
attending non-official higher education courses
in 1992 in Ireland, the existence of eight
"rogue colleges" was reported and the development
of private higher education has "led to growing
public concern about the need for consumer
protection" in France, there are references to
42 non-recognised institutions offering higher
education services and to 654 masters degrees and
282 MBAs in 1995 with no official recognition.
(Santos 2001 3).
Pattaya, 2005
48
40
Globalization, GATS, transnational providers
Cipes
These developments raise a serious problem of
consumer protection associated with lack of
adequate information (and therefore
transparency) available to the potential
students, employers and competent recognition
authorities.
There is a need to eliminate rogue
transnational providers, degree mills and bogus
institutions.
Pattaya, 2005
Some world wide organisations (UNESCO-Council of
Europe 2001 UNESCO-CEPES 2001) have produced
codes of good practice
49
41
Globalization, GATS, transnational providers
Exporters of higher education (US, UK, AUS) have
established codes of good practice for the
assurance of academic quality and standards in
the provision of education to foreign students.
Cipes
They want to ensure that the behaviour of their
national institutions does not in any way tarnish
the reputation of the countrys higher education,
which could forsake new medium/long term market
opportunities.
Pattaya, 2005
Quality and accreditation are a major concern in
relation to transnational or borderless education
and frameworks for licensing, accreditation,
qualification recognition and quality assurance
are important for all countries, whether they are
importing and exporting education services
(Knight 2002 13).
50
42
Conclusions
Quality systems albeit in a number of different
forms (quality assurance, accreditation,
licensing, etc.) are today an intrusive reality
of every national higher education system and
will remain an important regulation and steering
tool of many governments.
Cipes
There is a diversity of rationales explaining why
quality and the measurement of quality have
assumed such an important role.
Pattaya, 2005
Changes in the context surrounding higher
education such as massification, globalisation,
markets in public policy, new higher education
providers (private and for-profit) and increasing
competition for money, students, positions in
rankings have had a profound influence over the
universities and their governance and management
systems.
51
43
Conclusions
The increasing use of market mechanisms in higher
education has made important contributions to the
way in which universities operate.
Cipes
The new higher education markets have created the
need for more information on the quality of
educational provision which has introduced a
range of quality mechanisms such as performance
indicators, institutional rankings and systems of
quality assurance and accreditation.
Pattaya, 2005
The attack on traditional public services has
destroyed the trust of society on institutions
and has increased the demands for more
accountability-
52
44
Conclusions
So quality is here to stay. Through their long
and troubled history universities have survived
many crisis and have shown a remarkable
adaptation capacity. The present crisis is
perhaps the most dramatic of all crises but one
has to believe that the university can survive
once more.
Cipes
However to do this the university needs to regain
the trust of the society and to rewrite its
traditional pact with society, which has been
seriously questioned leading to changed
expectations with respect to the socio-economic
role of the university.
Pattaya, 2005
The emphasis has clearly shifted from the social
and cultural towards the economic function of the
university.
53
45
Conclusions
Cipes
The new knowledge society might offer a new
opportunity to universities by assuming knowledge
and innovation as an indispensable ingredient for
economic competitiveness and social progress.
But to seize this opportunity the academia needs
to draw a new contract with society, and
academics need to put forward a new case in
favour of higher education.
Pattaya, 2005
54
46
Conclusions
Cipes
In putting forward this new case the academia
needs to recognise that both markets and
governments have a contribution to make to higher
education regulation and that both have costs and
benefits. The appropriate balance between these
two modes of conduct has to be continually
reassessed, based on the purposes that society
wishes higher education to fulfil (Dill et al
2004).
Pattaya, 2005
55