Quality Assurance in Education

Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education

Mantz Yorke,
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Assuring quality and
standards in globalised
higher education
Mantz Yorke
The author
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Semarang At 21:52 14 March 2018 (PT)
Mantz Yorke is Director, Centre for Higher Education
Development, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool,
UK.
Keywords
Higher education, ISO 9000, Labour market, Quality,
Standards
Abstract
Relates higher education to the labour market, noting that
the pace of change in national and international
economies requires higher education to encourage the
development of people who can act effectively in turbulent
circumstances. Shows that quality and standards are open
to interpretations which depend upon the interpreter’s
perspective. Argues that the extra-institutional scrutiny of
quality and standards is appropriate where higher educa-
tion is expected to respond to national needs, but that the
method used needs to be adapted to institutional context.
Discusses the potential that ISO 9000, or an analogue,
might have for an extra-institutional quality assurance
system that is economical in operation.
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · pp. 14–24
© MCB University Press · ISSN 0968-4883
14
The scrutiny of quality and standards
There has, particularly in the last decade or
so, been an increasing concern on the part of
governments around the world to ensure that
higher education in their countries is worthy
of respect. To this end, national approaches to
extra-institutional scrutiny have been estab-
lished, which have taken forms that reflect
different national styles. For example, the
USA has, for a long time, relied on private
accreditation agencies which operate a volun-
tary system for institutions to become accred-
ited: the general acceptance of this approach
has given the agencies a quasi-public role (see
for example El-Khawas, 1994). In contrast,
The Netherlands operates a system of peer
review which is under the control of the uni-
versities themselves. National approaches to
quality assurance are additional to whatever
accreditation arrangements may be operated
by professional associations.
The assurance of quality and standards is
important. Higher education in a globalised
economy implies cross-national purchaser/
provider relationships, and brings to the fore
the following purposes for extra-institutional
quality assurance:
• the provision of information to the public
and other interested parties about quality
and standards;
• the giving of credibility to awards (and
hence to award holders); and
• the engendering of confidence in
purchasers that they will be making a
worthwhile investment when they enrol in
a programme.
Other purposes include accountability in
respect of the investment of public money,
clarity regarding the purposes of programmes,
and last, but certainly not least, the enhance-
ment of quality and standards.
Extra-institutional quality assurance in the
UK has been based upon institutional and
programme-specific aims, and hence there
has been uncertainty about inter-institutional
equivalences, particularly about standards.
The former Higher Education Quality Council
began to address the problem of calibrating
standards in its Graduate Standards Pro-
gramme (HEQC, 1997), and this work is
being developed by its successor, the Quality
Assurance Agency for Higher Education
(QAA) (see QAA, 1998).
A prospective dimension appears to be
lacking from the discussion of how quality
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
assurance should develop in the UK. Before
the characteristics of a quality assurance
system are determined it is necessary to have
identified the purposes and nature of the
higher education system to which quality
assurance is to be applied: these tend to evolve
over time, and hence imply the possibility of
change in quality assurance processes.
Already a number of trends are becoming
apparent in UK higher education, though the
time-scales of developments are difficult to
predict: amongst these are the changes being
brought about by information technology, by
greater knowledge of student learning, and by
attempts to make first degrees more generalist
with strong specialisation being deferred to
master’s degree programmes. The Dearing
Report (NCIHE, 1997) touched on some of
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the relevant issues when it set higher educa-
tion in the context of the learning society, but
the tone of its comments on quality assurance
is technicist and homeostatic. Higher educa-
tion – say ten years on, and more obviously
subject to global market forces – may well
need more than Dearing’s prescriptions
regarding quality assurance. However, before
I consider a possible direction for extra-insti-
tutional quality assurance that is different
from that envisaged by the QAA, it is neces-
sary to look briefly at the relationship of
higher education to a learning society.
The role of higher education in a
learning society
Higher education is tied up with the notion of
“the learning society” – a concept that seems
to have been extrapolated from “the learning
organisation” and which captures the need for
societies to transform themselves if they are
not to suffer relative decline. The learning
organisation, in Duke’s (1997, p. 67) terms,
can “read, analyse, adapt to, act on and inter-
act with its environment”. A learning society
would seem to require a similar set of abilities
(as, at the much more “micro” level, do indi-
viduals).
Barnett (1998) identifies four purposes of a
learning society, acknowledging that the
fourth is the least thoroughly worked out:
(1) The replenishment of human capital in
order to strengthen society’s economic
capital.
(2) An improvement in the quality of life of
individuals.
15
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
(3) The opening up of life-chances, in order
that individuals can play a full part in
society.
(4) The development of a societal capacity
for self-learning, thereby enabling the
transformation of society to be a process
of rational self-development.
In a number of countries, governments have
been at pains to stress the economic benefits
resulting from (or that should result from)
higher education: i.e. they are probably
emphasising the first of Barnett’s purposes, as
did the Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997). In
this article I limit myself to considering some
implications for quality assurance of pursuing
the purpose of economic benefit, to the exclu-
sion of the other purposes.
Higher education and the labour market
There is, however, a danger that expressions
of support for the learning society, and for the
contributory role of higher education, may be
tokenistic and sloganistic if made without an
appraisal of what the labour market needs
from higher education. Reich (1991, p. 171ff)
has suggested four categories into which
employment may be divided:
(1) “Routine production services”, which
include production activity and supervi-
sion, and whose desired characteristics
include reliability, loyalty, and the willing-
ness to be directed.
(2) “In-person services” (not the most felici-
tous of phrases), in which the focus of
activity is some form of personal service
to others, and for which, in addition to
reliability, loyalty and the willingness to
be directed, there is a need for a pleasant
interpersonal style.
(3) “Symbolic analytic services”, which
include the identification and/or solving
of problems, and associated brokering
activities. In this category will be found
scientists, engineers, system analysts,
consultants, and so on. The “symbolic
analyst” necessarily works through
abstraction of one kind or another: he or
she has to theorise and/or relate empirical
data to theory (and/or use formulae,
equations, models and metaphors), and
then to translate the outcomes of analysis
into practical action.
(4) A range of other activities which include
government-sponsored employment: for
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
example, teachers, engineers working on
defence contracts, work in utilities and
various kinds of work on the land.
Reich stresses that the categories are not hard
divisions, and that there can be quite a bit of
overlap. What needs to be added into the
analysis is the pool of disadvantaged people
who find it difficult or impossible to obtain
work: Hutton (1996), writing of the UK
economy, describes the “30/30/40 society” in
which about 30 per cent are disadvantaged
and economically inactive, 30 per cent are
marginalised and insecure (often involved in
part-time work), and the remaining 40 per
cent are privileged in terms of the relative
quality and security of their employment.
Hutton’s concern is that the growing disparity
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between the three groups has a corroding
effect on the cohesiveness of society. Keep
and Mayhew (1995, p. 117) are also con-
cerned about this, and point to the problem of
training those in the “peripheral workforce”.
The rhetoric about the creation of a high-skill
economy will not, in their view, be realised
merely as a consequence of market forces:
here they are contrasting the UK unfavourably
with countries such as Germany, France,
Japan, and the “tiger economies” of the
Pacific Rim (though a number of Pacific-
Asian economies have fallen into crisis since
Keep and Mayhew’s article was published).
Supporting national economic objectives
Higher education is of obvious importance in
supporting national economic objectives,
which may, in addition to the generation and
application of new knowledge and the devel-
opment of the indigenous labour force,
include the direct raising of extra-national
income. A (perhaps the) key contribution lies
in the development of symbolic analysts, in
respect of whom Reich (1991, p. 229) writes
of the need to refine four fundamental skills,
though these seem equally applicable to
others:
(1) abstraction (as noted above);
(2) system thinking (seeing the part in the
context of the wider whole);
(3) experimentation (intuitively or
analytically); and
(4) collaboration (involving communication
and team-working skills).
School – and some forms of higher – educa-
tion are not always successful in preparing
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Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
young people for the complexity inherent in
the role of the symbolic analyst. Pupils and
students may be expected to learn what is put
in front of them; subject matter may be com-
partmentalised; and many tasks are expected
to be accomplished on an individual basis,
with collaborative work being subject to pun-
ishment. The education of symbolic analysts
(who are likely to be those at the leading edge
of economic developments of one kind or
another) requires institutions to make a par-
ticular effort to develop in students the skills
noted by Reich.
However, higher education is emphatically
not only about the education of symbolic
analysts. Reflection on Reich’s categories of
employment quickly brings to mind a number
of opportunities for higher education to assist
economic development: as well as preparing
graduates and diplomates for employment-
related roles, higher education has an
acknowledged role in lifelong learning – for
example, in educating further the middle
manager so that he or she can manage more
effectively, in upskilling the teacher or process
worker, and so on. For some, “process knowl-
edge” (Eraut, 1994) will be more significant
than “product knowledge”.
The notion of “capability” is useful here,
since it can subsume all of Reich’s categories,
and it caters for the blurring of the categories’
boundaries. It is also explicit in its recognition
that the accelerating pace of innovation
requires people to be able to respond appro-
priately to unprecedented problems in condi-
tions that might be unfamiliar and possibly
turbulent. Stephenson and Weil sketch capa-
bility in the following terms:
Capable people have confidence in their ability
to:
(1) take effective and appropriate action;
(2) explain what they are seeking to achieve;
(3) live and work effectively with others; and
(4) continue to learn from their experiences,
both as individuals and in association with
others,
in a diverse and changing society.
Capability is a necessary part of specialist
expertise, not separate from it. Capable people
not only know about their specialisms, they also
have the confidence to apply their knowledge
and skills within varied and changing situations
and to continue to develop their specialist
knowledge and skills... (Stephenson and Weil,
1992, p. 2, minor presentational changes
made).
Some study in higher education will be under-
taken as continuing professional development
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
within a context in which lifelong learning is
the norm. After all, the pace of development
in the world is such that an initial qualification
has a decreasing shelf-life. One needs to trot
to stay still, and to run rather faster in order to
get ahead.
Quality and standards
Definitional difficulties
The terms “quality” and “standards” are
used rather loosely in the UK. Part of the
looseness arises because various interested
parties bring different perspectives to bear. In
this paper I use the definition of quality that is
given in the quality vocabulary of ISO 8042:
“the totality of features and characteristics of
a product or service that bear on its ability to
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satisfy stated or implied needs”. Quality,
under the ISO 8402 vocabulary, is in the eye
of the customer – or, less obviously, in the eye
of the supplier who anticipates correctly what
the customer will need, even if the latter has
not yet realised what the need actually is.
Responding acceptably to stated needs (i.e.
wants) will probably satisfy the customer,
whereas anticipating the customer’s (implied)
needs will perhaps engender delight. In this
article I am drawing attention to the impor-
tance of anticipating the national need.
The notion of the totality of features and
characteristics implies the possibility of opti-
misation, since it may be unrealistic to expect
that each feature or characteristic will be
maximally present. Optimisation is partic-
ularly pertinent to higher education, since a
simple supplier/customer model does not
apply, and students are themselves varied in
background, preferred learning style, and so
on. Students are both customers of provided
services and partners in the process of learn-
ing. Students judging their experiences in
higher education may think of its quality
simply in terms of what was provided. They
might overlook the extent to which they were
required to study material that would later be
of value (but that at the time seemed to have
little point), or the extent to which they were
actually stimulated to take responsibility for
their learning. Another point to be made is
that someone outside the institution/student
relationship – such as an employer – is likely
to assess quality with reference to what the
emerging student can actually do. For an
employer, the totality of attributes of the
higher education experience that were of
17
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
importance to the student’s learning recede
into the background, and it is the totality of
the student’s attributes that are important to
the satisfaction of perceived needs (and hence
form the basis of a judgment about quality).
Figure 1 gives a flavour of the complexity of
the situation. The quality of the educational
experience is influenced by a number of
features; the student then achieves a profile of
standards (though this profile is typically
obscured by giving a single award for what is
in reality a collection of performances); and
this profile of standards becomes what the
employer – and perhaps the world in general –
perceives as the quality of the emerging stu-
dent. A significant difficulty here is that of
identifying criteria relating to the so-called
“transferable skills” (though it has to be said
that the criteria used in respect of subject-
specific skills are more problematic than some
appreciate). The holistic notion of capability
blends the subject-specific and the “transfer-
able” in that it caters for the “messiness” of
the problems that occur throughout life: it
therefore has an affinity with project-based
knowledge production which can be charac-
terised as the extraction of knowledge from
problem-solving in naturalistic settings, and is
differentiated from discipline-driven knowl-
edge production (for a discussion of the dif-
ferences between the two modes of knowledge
production, see Gibbons et al., 1994).
There is, in this approach to the notion of
quality, a distinction between quality and
standards. Quality is taken to be the totality of
attributes bearing on the student’s experience
(the needs are not wholly those articulated by
the student, and include those that might be
anticipated for the student), whereas “ stan-
dards” refers to the expectations set for the
student’s programme of study (and which
therefore have a bearing on the quality of the
student experience) as well as the levels of
performance achieved by the student.
Differing perspectives on the assurance
of quality and standards
The distinction between the usages of the
terms “quality” and “standards” is of impor-
tance because of its implications for quality
assurance. Looking at the situation from the
perspective of a national government, the
whole institution is likely to be the unit of
analysis: rarely would a government be happy
with an excellent programme in an otherwise
unsatisfactory institution. In other words, a
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
Figure 1 Quality and standards, as seen from different perspectives
INTERNAL
Resources
Curriculum Academics’
the student
design efforts
experience
Student’s
effort
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Key
Major influence
Limited determining effect
Source: Yorke, 1997
government or governmental agency will
“sum” across the various programmes on
offer in coming up with an opinion about the
reputability of an institution, and institutional
accreditation (where practised) will be based
on both this summation and a consideration
of how the institution itself manages the
business of assuring both quality and stan-
dards (I shall hereafter use the term “quality
assurance” in a general way to subsume both
quality and standards).
Professional associations of various kinds
have an important part to play in higher edu-
cation, being concerned to ensure that stan-
dards are upheld in their areas of disciplinary
interest. They frequently have the right,
through their accreditation procedures, to
issue “licences to practise” to those who show
that they have reached the standards required.
From the point of view of quality assurance,
however, their perspective may differ from
that of a state. The professional association is
primarily concerned to uphold quality and
standards in the relevant discipline. In a
monotechnic institution, the interests of the
state and the relevant professional association
are likely to be quite close, but in a multidisci-
plinary institution the state is likely to be more
concerned with the provision across, rather
than within, the subject disciplines involved.
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
EXTERNAL
Support
services
Quality of ‘Quality
Standard = of the
achieved
student’
Standards
set for the
programme
Are current approaches to extra-
institutional scrutiny appropriate?
There has been debate as to whether the
systems that have been set up actually best
address the needs of higher education (in its
role as contributor to the national good). I
have argued elsewhere that the changes facing
higher education (including declining
resources and developments in communica-
tions technology) are potentially of such mag-
nitude that radical development is needed in
pedagogy, and that extra-institutional quality
scrutiny has been more concerned with deal-
ing with yesterday’s problems than the prob-
lems of tomorrow (Yorke, 1994; 1996). In
making such an argument, I have been placing
enhancement of higher education ahead of the
checking of existing and past practices, on the
assumption that if enhancement is “got right”,
then what is required for accountability pur-
poses can be expected to follow more or less as
a matter of course. Such an argument is sus-
tainable in a context in which the vast majority
of provision is acceptable in terms of quality
and standards. In the UK, only a very small
proportion of the higher education provision
has been found to be unsatisfactory, which
raises the question of whether a rather large
and heavy sledgehammer of peer-review
18
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
visiting has been used to crack a relatively
small nut[1].
An enhancement-oriented approach may
not be enough
The vast majority of higher education in the
UK is funded in part by government, giving
government a direct lever with which it can
intervene in respect of quality and standards.
Elsewhere, some governments are less well
placed to support the volume of higher educa-
tion desired by their populations, and a
greater proportion of higher education is
provided by the private sector: in such cir-
cumstances the governments emphasise their
responsibility to protect the public interest.
Some private institutions are of very high
standing (one need only look to the USA for
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examples), whereas others have yet to estab-
lish a good reputation. In a nation in which
the supply of higher education is expanding
rapidly, developments may take place more
quickly than the establishment of monitoring
procedures, with a consequent threat to
quality and standards. Where an institution is
involved in a collaborative arrangement with
an overseas institution whose quality assur-
ance system is demonstrably robust, a govern-
ment may feel able to trust with some confi-
dence that the strength of the inter-institu-
tiuonal link is sufficient to act as a guarantee
of quality and standards.
Where there is a marked unevenness in
quality and standards, it may not be enough
to argue that all that might be wanted by way
of accountability could follow from a commit-
ment to enhancement: the base-line from
which an institution is starting may simply be
too low. When the base-line is low, there
seems no alternative to a thorough extra-
institutional scrutiny by a governmental
agency or some appropriate proxy until such
time as the scrutineers are satisfied that quality
and standards are above an appropriate
threshold. Once the threshold is surpassed,
then the institution concerned could be sub-
jected to a “lighter” form of scrutiny.
A global framework?
Transnational purchasing of higher education
requires that the vendor’s standards are
demonstrably on a par with international
expectations. The Global Alliance for
Transnational Education (GATE) may have a
role to play in helping to ensure that higher
education programmes meet an international
19
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
threshold, or that the “exporting” of higher
education is undertaken against GATE certi-
fication. Woodhouse (1997) suggests that
GATE might form the nucleus, or a forerun-
ner, of a global accreditation operation, per-
haps through national quality assurance
agencies adopting GATE principles. GATE
certification could however involve a further
layer of quality assurance bureaucracy, which
would be undesirable on a number of practi-
cal grounds. The weaker concept, under
which national agencies adopt GATE princi-
ples, has a hint of the European Community’s
notion of “subsidiarity” about it (and hence
details of interpretation might vary from
country to country), but seems to be the
pragmatic limit for quality assurance in higher
education.
To varying extents, governments supply
higher education with money raised from
taxes, and need to assure themselves that the
money has been well spent. In some cases the
specific notion of the “return on investment”
is invoked, requiring institutions to provide
data against a series of performance indica-
tors. Further, if their countries are keen to
earn income from others through higher
education provision, they need to be able to
demonstrate that their programmes meet
international expectations.
Realpolitik
It should be noted that extra-institutional
quality scrutiny may not be politically neutral.
In Turkey, a group of established universities
are keen to set up some sort of quality assur-
ance stockade, from behind which they can
assert their excellence (and, by implication,
the lack of excellence in those outside it).
Such an élite group is more likely than those it
sees as “outsiders” to be in a position to influ-
ence a government in the way that it operates
national policy in respect of higher education.
The international analogue, as far as excel-
lence is concerned, is that of the members of
Universitas 21 (a group of prestigious univer-
sities across the globe), which see mutuality of
benchmarking as a way of asserting particular
strengths in respect of quality and standards.
Assuring quality and standards
economically
A distraction from “core business”?
There is a developing concern in the UK and
elsewhere that extra-institutional quality
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
scrutiny is diverting too much of academics’
attention from their primary purposes of
teaching, research and community service,
particularly at a time in which pressure on
resources is growing. Aronowitz and DiFazio
(1994) put a libertarian view with some force:
Under the impact of economic constraints we
have entered a new era of academic cost cutting
and of surveillance whose intended as well as
unintended effects are to discourage indepen-
dent intellectual work. For a society that trum-
pets the growth imperative as the key to sur-
vival, and for which knowledge is the acknowl-
edged economic spur, such measures are, of
course, self-defeating (Aronowitz and DiFazio,
1994, p. 341).
Given that extra-institutional quality assurance
is unlikely to be deemed surplus to require-
ments in the near future, how can it be organ-
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ised in a resource-economic way? The question
can be unpacked into components which are
conceptual (what does one really want to know
about both standards and quality?) and proce-
dural (how should the business of quality
assurance be tackled?).
Standards
The question has to be answered with refer-
ence to a number of primary questions, on to
which can be grafted a much larger number of
subsidiary questions, such as those suggested
in HEQC (1996) and QAA (1997). Regarding
standards, the primary questions are as follows:
(1) Is a student’s “bare pass” in the assess-
ments for an award acceptable when
judged against national/international
criteria?
(2) Does the profile of awards in the institu-
tion (or relevant part of the institution)
show an appropriate proportion of out-
comes that can be demonstrated to meet
accepted criteria for excellence?
These two questions address the issues of
threshold standards and of excellence. To be
recognised as a “good” institution (or part of
an institution), it is necessary to show that not
only are the thresholds of acceptability of
student performance well-founded, but also
that excellence in outcomes is a reality – the
implication being that standards at these two
reference points need to be benchmarked. It
should be noted that there is more than a single
criterion of excellence: the institution produc-
ing world-class outcomes can clearly claim the
excellence of its “products” (the “absolute”
claim), but so can the institution which helps
20
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
students who are poorly qualified at entry to
reach acceptable outcome standards (the
“value-added” claim).
The benchmarking of standards is a com-
plex operation, since it requires an analysis of
the demand made of students and professional
judgment to be exercised as to whether the
demand of, say, a set of assignments and exer-
cises is equivalent to that of an examination in
which there is no choice of question or to an
examination in which the candidate is allowed
to answer, say, four questions from nine.
Benchmarking becomes even more complex
when performances of students in group activi-
ties have to be assessed (as might well be the
case when the curriculum contains a commit-
ment to capability) or when international
comparisons are essayed – see for example
Vroeijenstijn et al. (1992) on electrical engi-
neering, and Lonbay (1994) on law. A prelimi-
nary study of the benchmarking of academic
standards in the UK (in business studies,
computer studies, and history) has shown that,
where the system allows institutions consider-
able autonomy in curriculum design, the lack
of standardisation in curriculum content and
assessment methodology makes benchmarking
a substantially qualitative activity in which
professional judgment is to the fore (Yorke et
al., 1998). Some have argued that curricula in
higher education should be at least part-com-
mon (e.g. Howarth and Croudace, 1995, in
respect of psychology), but standardisation of
curricula may militate against the encourage-
ment to stretch boundaries in the relevant
discipline or to make new connections between
different disciplines. There are, as I noted
above, professional associations which bring
their own perspectives to bear on curricula and
their assessment.
Quality
The key questions relating to quality are
process-related.
(1) Does the educational process that is in
place make a satisfactory bridge between
the entrants to the programme and the
programme’s intended outcomes?
(2) What evidence is there that the educational
process (rather than the inherent ability of
the students) is contributing to excellence
in educational outcomes, if excellence is
detected?
The first question implicitly makes the point
that an institution should be able to provide
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
educational processes suitable for the range of
entrants to attain at least the threshold stan-
dard of outcome. If the implementation of the
programme is determined solely on the basis of
“supply-side” considerations then, if the intake
is diverse in respect of – say – preferred per-
sonal learning style, some students may obtain
a relatively poor “deal”.
The second question makes a different
connection between process and outcome. If
the educational process itself is of excellent
quality, then the chances of student success
are maximised. Anyone who has experience of
teaching and learning knows full well that the
causal relationship between teaching and
learning is mediated by some kind of proba-
bility coefficient: excellent teaching is not
necessarily followed by good learning (the
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Semarang At 21:52 14 March 2018 (PT)
student could be seriously distracted by the
collapse of a personal relationship, for exam-
ple), nor is good learning necessarily the
product of good teaching (occasionally it is
said – perhaps with tongue in cheek – that if
the teaching is bad, then the students are
forced to learn for themselves, which can be a
good thing). However, the possibility of non-
causality between teaching and learning
should not act as a distraction from the gen-
eral view that, all things being equal, good
learning is more likely to happen as a conse-
quence of good teaching rather than of poor
teaching.
How should extra-institutional quality
assurance be conducted?
There are two basic approaches to extra-insti-
tutional quality assurance of institutions: the
government (or a government-contracted or -
legitimated agency) can undertake the task, or
reliance can be placed on the quality assurance
procedures of a collaborating institution from
outside the nation’s borders. A number of UK
institutions have collaborative links with inter-
national partners, and apply their own quality
assurance procedures to the partnership
arrangements. There have, however, been a
few well-publicised examples of international
collaboration involving UK institutions in
which the assurance of quality has lagged
significantly behind the entrepreneurial inno-
vation, and the QAA in the UK will be the
body which will bring into being tightened
procedures following strong recommendations
made in the Dearing Report (see NCIHE, 1997,
paragraphs 10.72-10.78). The strengthened
procedures should provide the UK’s
21
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
international partners with an assurance that
partnerships involving UK institutions can be
trusted.
As noted earlier, quality assurance covers
both the quality of the student experience and
the standards set for, and achieved by, stu-
dents. In a globalised higher education context
it is increasingly important that curricula,
standards and quality meet international
expectations (Gilbert, 1997), and especially so
if higher education is seen as a medium
through which extra-national income can be
raised. If, in considering collaborative provi-
sion, a nation can have a well-founded confi-
dence in the quality assurance procedures of
internationally-respected partner institutions,
then it is already some way down the track of
establishing the reputability of the programmes
that are on offer. A “ light touch” review
process may be sufficient for the government to
satisfy itself that the collaborative venture is
working properly.
Where institutions are working as indepen-
dent providers, there is a need for the govern-
ment to be satisfied that curricula, standards
and quality are satisfactory. For well-estab-
lished institutions of high reputation, an insti-
tutional accreditation process ought to be fairly
straightforward, though even in the best insti-
tutions (to judge from experience in the UK)
scope for improvement is likely to be found.
Where it does not already take place, bench-
marking with reference to internationally-
respected provision would give such institu-
tions a basis for judging whether their offerings
would be competitive in the international
arena. Woodhouse (1997) reports that institu-
tions in New Zealand are now being asked
what benchmarking they are doing, which
other institutions they are involving, and what
use is being made of the information gained.
There is an impetus in this approach towards
some form of continuous comparison which, if
conducted thoroughly, ought to provide some
useful evidence to governments regarding
institutional bona fides.
Other, less well-established, institutions may
have more difficulty initially in satisfying the
requirements of institutional accreditation, and
it may be necessary for these to set in motion
development plans that can, over a period of
time, bring them up to a satisfactory level. In
the first instance, benchmarking against similar
institutions within the country’s borders would
be likely to be useful, though some institutions’
aspirations will need the more distant marker
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
of international expectations to provide them
with a compass bearing – the metaphor is quite
apt since international expectations, like mag-
netic poles, will shift position over time.
Is there a role for ISO 9000 or an analogue?
In the UK the demands of teaching quality
assessment and quality audit have been felt by
many to have been cumbersome and burden-
some, and the QAA is piloting measures
which it hopes will streamline extra-institu-
tional scrutiny. Despite a flurry of interest in
the potential of ISO 9000 for institutional
quality assurance in the early 1990s, little has
been done to explore whether this standard,
or a standard derived from it, might be useful
for higher education, although a few institu-
tions have achieved accreditation under the
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Semarang At 21:52 14 March 2018 (PT)
standard for localised parts of their provision.
Ellis (1993) discussed how the identical
former British Standard BS 5750 might be
applied in higher education, relating the
elements of the standard to the specific area of
teaching. There is not the space to revisit
Ellis’ argument here, but I would like to draw
attention to one feature of accreditation under
ISO 9000 which could be of significance for
quality assurance in higher education.
The initial accreditation visit consists of a
thoroughgoing investigation of an organisa-
tion’s quality assurance system. Whilst minor
infractions of procedure are not necessarily
fatal to an application for accreditation, major
infractions invariably are. An institution
whose initial application fails can, of course,
attempt to put matters in order and reapply.
The point I want to make relates to what
happens after successful accreditation under
ISO 9000 or another standard of similar
intention. An organisation accredited under
ISO 9000 is subject to follow-up visits from
assessors, which can take place without prior
notification. There is thus no time for a story
hastily to be put together and an act to be put
on for the visit. Instead, it is necessary for the
organisation to have the relevant documenta-
tion in place and known by employees, and to
be working according to its accredited proce-
dures – but this is no more than good organi-
sational practice anyway (how many higher
education institutions would pass such a
test?). Could this not offer a way forward for
extra-institutional quality scrutiny, in that it
would not be subject to the methodological
weaknesses of scrutiny processes which signal
well in advance when an external team is to
22
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
visit? The approach used for ISO 9000 has the
further advantage of being likely to be rela-
tively economical of resources, and could be
operated with minimal use of practising acad-
emics whose primary concerns are held by
many to be teaching and research – though it
has to be faced that such a methodology
would be closer to inspection than to peer
review, and would therefore be not without
controversy.
An approach based on ISO 9000 may serve
to provide evidence that an institution has a
soundly grounded approach to the assurance
of quality and standards, and answer the
question “Are things being done right?”. It
may be less satisfactory in addressing the
other question “Are the right things being
done?”, for which an anticipatory stance is
required. The latter should have been
addressed at the validation of a programme
(when external expertise is typically brought
to bear), but my experience is that this kind of
question is sometimes treated perfunctorily,
with panels giving much greater attention to
matters such as structures and curricular
detail. The QAA, in its Subject Review Hand-
book (QAA, 1997, p. 24), points to the impor-
tance of developments in not only industry
and the professions but also the academic
disciplines involved: however, the extent to
which review teams will be able to adopt a
future-oriented stance remains to be seen.
Given that the future is open to dispute, it
would be difficult for a review team or ISO
9000 assessors to assert a particular view. The
identification of a future scenario is perhaps a
buck that has to stop with the institution, with
a team of reviewers or assessors contenting
itself with ascertaining that an appropriate
“futures analysis” underpins the curriculum
at the focus of the visit.
Coda
The future is encroaching rapidly, and the
development of higher education needs to be
framed with this very much in mind. The
predominantly homeostatic nature of much
extra-institutional quality scrutiny makes it, in
my view, generally inadequate to the chal-
lenge: the successes of the present and past
are, as investors are warned, not necessarily a
good guide to the successes of the future.
Some are already tolling the bell for the
demise of traditional approaches to teaching
and learning in higher education[2], the more
 Assuring quality and standards in globalised higher education
Mantz Yorke
dramatic commentators predicting that rising
tuition costs and the burgeoning accessibility
of information through electronic means will
drive students increasingly towards distance
and/or open learning, where the “edutain-
ment” providers are set to cash in on demand.
A recent report from Australia (Cunningham
et al., 1998) however, suggests that this
doomsday scenario is being overplayed, since
there is relatively little evidence that the global
media corporations are interested in investing
in materials production (though they may be
more active in acting as carriers for materials
provided by others, a field in which computer
hardware and software providers also have an
interest). Cunningham et al. see “corporate
universities” as more of a threat to higher
education institutions, since they are well
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Semarang At 21:52 14 March 2018 (PT)
placed to compete for high-value niche
training.
Over the medium term, the future of higher
education may be more prosaic than some
enthusiasts for the new technology would
have it. Of course, higher education will
change and adapt as new materials and deliv-
ery vehicles become available – it may be the
“mix” of learning methods that is the most
marked of the changes. The “capability”
agenda and the education of Reich’s symbolic
analysts both imply a need for students to
learn not only subject-specific material, but
also how to be effective users of their knowl-
edge in society. This implies a higher educa-
tion that is, in part, a social activity: a degree
gained solely via the Internet may prove insuf-
ficient unless the student already has a well-
developed repertoire of abilities which he or
she can exploit.
Higher education needs to review what it is
seeking to achieve, and the means through
which the attainment of its aims will be
secured. The mix of methods of the past,
though successful in its day, is unlikely to be
appropriate for the future. As costs rise and
educational material becomes more readily
available, so the modalities of learning and
teaching in higher education will evolve.
Institutions will have to find new ways of
presenting their attractiveness, in which the
delivery of their commitment to quality and
standards will be a significant component.
The severe challenge for extra-institutional
quality assurance is how to make itself an
activity which demonstrably adds value to
institutional activities.
23
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 7 · Number 1 · 1999 · 14–24
Notes
1 The costs to the Higher Education Funding Council for
England of teaching quality assessment have been
about 0.1 per cent of the money allocated for teaching.
They do not, however, include the opportunity costs to
institutions of preparing for quality assessment (now
being restyled in both name and substance as “subject
review”), nor those of having respected academics
absent on peer-reviewing duty. Further, they do not
include what institutions do on their own initiative to
assure quality and standards, such as the validation,
monitoring and review of programmes, and the
employment of external examiners. The totality of these
costs may still be low compared with those of a com-
mercial organisation with a commitment to quality
assurance: perhaps the critical issue is whether better
use could be made of the resources currently devoted to
internal and extra-institutional quality scrutiny.
2 Among the many sources here are CSUP (1992),
Oblinger and Rush (1997) and Yorke et al. (1996).
Daniel (1996) points to the low cost of a degree from
the UK’s Open University (of which he is Vice Chancel-
lor) compared with that from the typical higher educa-
tion institution, but he in his turn is likely to be con-
cerned about competition from countries such as India,
where overhead costs are roughly an order of magni-
tude lower (as can be inferred from the table in Daniel,
1996, p. 31).
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