Ten years of external quality audit in Australia: evaluating its effectiveness and success

External quality audits are now being used in universities across the world to improve quality assurance, accountability for quality education and transparency of public funding of higher education. Some countries such as Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark have had external quality audits for more than a decade but there has been limited research as to their impact. This study analyses the extent to which external audits in Australia have improved quality assurance in universities over the past 10 years. The analysis is based on discussions with 40 participants in a workshop on the effectiveness of audits and the review of 60 external quality audit reports between 2001 and December 2010. The research found that while external audits have led to an improvement in systems and processes in Australian universities, they have not necessarily improved the student experience. This lack of impact on the student experience in Australia is similar to other countries, according to the literature review. This study is timely in its analysis on the effectiveness of the current improvement-led audits, as government in Australia is in the process of renewing quality assurance arrangements of higher education institutions with a focus on standards and outcomes.     

澳大利亚高等教育质量保证体制综述

文章首先考察了20世纪90年代澳大利亚高等教育质量保证的发展，然后总括了澳大利亚目前多层面质量保证体制，论及了两个联合政府机构：澳大利亚学历资格评定框架署和澳大利亚大学质量保证总暑，联邦、州和地区政府以及高等教育部门的各种职能。     

Quality assurance in Australian higher education: Globalisation and `steering at a distance'

The complex and contested phenomenon of globalisation presents a fundamental challenge to higher education. Arguably, the development of quality assurance mechanisms during the 1990s and into the 2000s is one of the key globalising practices evident in many higher education sectors – in both developed and developing countries. However, there are still too few studies on the implications of globalisation processes grounded in detailed examinations of particular historical times and geographical spaces. It is important to investigate context-specific differences in potentially globalising policies and practices, rather than simply assuming global homogenisation. This paper offers an analysis of policy on quality assurance in Australian higher education over the last decade. It points to the changing discourses on `quality' over the period from a management device to a marketing device. It suggests that, in essence, quality assurance mechanisms have provided the government with an avenue for `steering at a distance', where the controls over universities and academics have not lessened but have changed form. The specific mechanisms used are both similar to, and different from, those evident in quality assurance policies in other higher education systems.     

Learning to Teach Offshore: Pre-Departure training for lecturers in transnational programs

The internationalisation of higher education in Australia over the past two decades has brought about dramatic changes in Australian universities. Growing numbers of international students have enrolled in Australian universities and the number of students studying offshore has also increased dramatically. While considerable material has been published on the ramifications of the increased numbers of onshore international students studying at Australian universities, there is relatively little published research on the specific challenges facing academics participating in offshore programs. The aim of this project was to examine the current pre-departure cross-cultural training taking place in the business faculties of three Australian universities in order to gain a better understanding of the adequacy of the support given to Australian academics teaching offshore. Twenty staff involved in offshore education were interviewed as part of this project, including academics with considerable offshore teaching experience, senior academic managers and cross-cultural trainers. While these institutions engage in little formal preparation for offshore teaching, a great deal of informal mentoring and briefing is taking place. We consider the implications of the new quality assurance framework for Australian universities, which requires that institutions be able to demonstrate the ways in which they ensure the quality of teaching and learning. Under this new system, universities are bound by the Australian Vice Chancellors' Committee's guidelines for the provision of education to international students. It appears that Australian universities will need to establish more formal mechanisms to ensure that offshore staff are adequately prepared for offshore teaching posts.     

Quality Teaching and Learning in Australian and South African Universities: Comparing policies and practices

Over the last decade universities across the world have been grappling with quality and quality assurance issues. In several countries national policies on higher education quality assurance have been evolving, mostly with the purpose of putting external systems of quality assurance in place. In many instances, these policies and systems had less effect on the quality of teaching and learning than had been expected. This paper serves as a comparison of national quality policy developments in two countries, Australia and South Africa, and goes on to investigate the emerging tensions in quality policy processes in these countries. Whereas a number of similarities were discerned, differences were as evident, verifying the underlying assumption of the authors that notions of quality, and quality policies and their implementation are very much dependent on the particular localised contexts in which they exist.     

Framing attrition in higher education: a complex problem

This study situates student attrition within the strategic framework of Australian public universities. It draws on organisational theory to describe higher education within a bureaucratic framework. The study uses a quantitative approach to undertake a content analysis of attrition and retention policy statements from all Australian universities. This reveals that Australian universities, and the higher education sector as a whole, are attempting to address attrition within their existing bureaucracies. Attrition however is a wicked problem that includes many variables outside the influence of universities, which limits the potential of strategic approaches to problem solving. The practical implications of these findings are that current approaches to attrition are likely to fail. The wicked nature of the attrition problem needs to be taken into account when developing strategies or policies within higher education.     

国外研究生培养质量保障体系分析及启示

构建完善的研究生内部质量保障和外部质量监督体系对提高交通运输工程高层次人才培养质量具有重要意义。论文在分析我国研究生培养质量保障体系现状的基础上,对发达国家的研究生教育质量保障体系现状进行调研。总结国外成熟经验,从加强研究生培养全过程的质量保障、建立研究生教育外部质量保障体系、制定研究生教育法规和政策等方面为我国研究生教育质量保障体系的建设提供经验借鉴。     

终身教育资历框架下的质量保证机制:欧盟和东盟的策略与启示

终身教育资历框架的建立为各级各类教育的纵向衔接和横向沟通提供了可能,为保证资历衔接的公平、公正和透明,严格的质量保证机制是基础。欧盟建立了基于资历框架下的高等教育质量保证标准和职业教育与培训质量保证参照框架,东盟构建了资历参照框架下的东盟质量保证框架并推动了东盟国家的资历衔接,通过对欧盟和东盟资历框架下的质量保证机制进行剖析,提出我国资历框架质量保证体系建立的策略性建议,以期为我国终身教育资历框架和配套质量保证体系的构建提供参考。     

Is the enhancement of student experience a strategic priority in Australian universities?

Universities in many countries are developing strategies to enhance the student experience. This focus has never been so important since the development of rankings and the use of student experience measures in institutional performance assessment. Australian government policies to link student experience measures to performance funding were a key driver to increase the prominence of the student voice between 2004 and 2008. This paper analyses the strategic plans of 33 Australian universities with the aim of outlining the extent to which the enhancement of student experience is embedded as one of their key priorities. This review comes at a time when universities in Australia and elsewhere are realigning their future strategies and directions to achieve government aspirations for tertiary education with the introduction of various policy instruments including the possibility of rewarding universities on the basis of student experience measures. The paper also provides a comparative analysis of government policies in Australia and the UK on the measurement and enhancement of the student experience.     

The Australian higher education quality assurance framework

The Australian government initiated a review of higher education in 2008. One of the outcomes of the review was the formation of a national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), with responsibilities to: register all higher education providers, accredit the courses of the non self-accrediting providers, assure quality against externally set standards and reduce risk by monitoring institutional performance on various measures. One of the key changes in Australian higher education quality assurance is the shift from a ‘fitness-for-purpose’ approach to quality assurance to a compliance-driven approach using an externally developed set of standards monitored by the national regulator, which has legislated powers to place sanctions on universities and other providers for non-compliance. This article outlines the new framework introduced by the government and analyses its limitations in assuring and improving quality in core and support areas. It cautions universities against being dominated by TEQSA's compliance agenda. Rather, it encourages the development and maintenance of shared governance principles and strong internal quality improvement processes along with the establishment of an outcomes focus, which will stand the test of external compliance auditing while allowing the institution to pursue its own educational objectives. The article is based on the authors’ experience and reflection on external, improvement-led quality audits in Australia over the past decade compared with the present compliance-oriented audits now required for institutional registration and ongoing accreditation.     

资历架构对中国终身学习“立交桥”建设的启示——2013年香港资历架构国际会议综述

2013年3月,主题为"让人才全球流动--资历架构国际会议"在香港举行,来自世界400多名代表出席了会议,会议旨在探讨资历架构在终身学习及人力资源发展中的角色和作用。所谓资历架构(Qualifications Framework,简称QF),是一个跨界别的资历等级制度,用以整理和支持主流教育、职业培训和持续进修方面的资历。资历架构建设是终身学习与继续教育的基础性工程,必须依靠质量保证机制来保障。世界各国和地区在资历架构和质量保证方面的经验,为我们搭建终身学习"立交桥"提供了很多启示。目前,中国内地的普通高校继续教育部门、职业院校、开放大学把终身学习"立交桥"建设作为改革发展、制度建设的重要目标之一。中国终身教育的"立交桥"与包括澳大利亚和香港特区在内的多个国家、地区所实施的资历架构异曲同工,都需要以质量为基础,注重评价标准的制定,强调学习成果的评价,以能力和成效为本;需要跨部门、跨行业的多方合作才能实现;需要跨国、跨地区的多方对接才能凸显其价值。     

澳大利亚资格框架改革探究

资格证书作为一种评价和认证手段对教育质量的保障起着关键作用。澳大利亚的资格框架在2009年就证书分类、证书结构和框架内容等进行了比较大的调整,以加强对资格证书的质量保障。其改革举措对我国职业资格证书制度的改革和完善不乏借鉴意义。     

The recontextualisation of ‘quality’ in Australian higher education

In the education policy arena, the notion of ‘quality'as a mechanism for increasing accountability to stakeholders has risen to prominence in the 1990s, as part of the micro‐economic reform agenda of many national governments. This study analyses the way in which policy makers in Australian higher education have recontextualised the notions of quality adopted in other countries to reconstruct a uniquely Australian version. Further, the study analyses how this recontextualisation continues from the ministerial level, through the Higher Education Council (HEC), and then the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (CQAHE), to the site of intended policy effect ‐‐ individual universities. A theoretical framework, in part offered by Stephen Ball's policy trajectory studies, is employed to examine the negotiation, resistance and even transformation of the original ministerial quality policy of 1991. A central contention is that the operation of the subsequent 3‐year cycle of quality reviews between 1993 and 1995 provides an example par excellence of a government strategy of ‘steering at a distance’.     

芬兰赫尔辛基大学的内部质量保障探究

随着全球高等教育质量保障运动的不断发展,建立与完善高等院校的内部质量保障机制已成为许多国家保证教育质量、提高社会声誉、增强国际竞争力的重要手段.本文通过分析北欧高校内部质量保障的特点,着重介绍芬兰赫尔辛基大学的内部保障体系,以及赫尔辛基大学最新内部教学质量评估标准制定的理念,旨在为我国高校内部质量保障机制的建设与发展提供借鉴和参考.     

Current challenges to quality in higher education

This paper considers some implications for teaching in higher education of quality assurance demands made in circumstances of financial restraint. The paper suggests that responses must be anchored in improvement in student learning. This has implications for university teaching, for the evaluation of its effectiveness and for leadership in universities. The paper commences with a discussion of an understanding of the nature of the relationship between teaching and learning in higher education resulting from an Australian investigation of student perceptions of university teaching. The understanding arising from this study suggests that, given that the environment is an educational one, both evaluation of teaching and educational leadership should be in harmony with effective approaches to learning and teaching.Paul Ramsden is Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Griffith Institute for Higher Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He has taught in polytechnics, universities, and schools in the United Kingdom and Australia. His research field is the influence of teaching and assessment on the quality of student learning. Dr. Ramsden has been professionally involved in faculty development for over 15 years and published the textLearning to Teach in Higher Education, Routledge, New York (1992). He holds degrees from the University of London and the UK Council for Academic Awards, and a Ph.D. from the University of Lancaster.     

Recognition of prior learning: the accelerated rate of change in Australian universities

The recognition of prior learning (RPL) is a cornerstone of the lifelong learning policies of most developed nations. Yet the scholarly view in Australia has been that, unlike other post‐compulsory education sectors, universities have erected barriers to limit the development of RPL. This paper re‐examines the current policy environment and finds evidence that universities are now more active in developing and promoting RPL, as evidenced by the rich detail of information contained in recent policies, as well as the accessibility of this information on the web. Recognition of prior learning policies are examined in detail to shed light further on the state of play of RPL in the Australian higher education sector.     

宾夕法尼亚大学的教学质量内外保障机制

宾夕法尼亚大学是美国著名的常青藤大学联盟成员之一 ,有悠久的办学历史世人瞩目的办学成绩。宾大的教学质量保障体系包括内部和外部两个部分 ,质量保障的外部机制包括接受美国高等学校认证和全美大学排名 ,内部质量保障机制包括秩序井然的人力资源管理机制、完善的教师管理和评价体系以及科学系统的内部教学评估制度。     

The role of external experts’ intervention in higher education institutions for radical change

This paper focuses on the way lecturers observe, feel restrained by and cope with quality management systems that have been implemented in the higher education systems of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. As two sides of the same coin, quality enhancement and quality control are of increased significance in European Higher Educaction Institutions (HEIs), particularly through the Bologna Process. We are interested in the way that both enhancement and control blend into the current systems, and we are concerned for too much dominance of control, as has been suggested in recent managerial literature. Analysis of 40 interviews in both countries among researchers and lecturers in traditional and universities of applied sciences showed many similarities. It is not so much the general idea of quality management that is being turned down by the respondents. They see the benefits quite clearly. Still, the general belief is that quality management in its current shape and character does not fit with the work of the individual academic, neither their teaching nor their research. The respondents worry for and resent the consequences of increased emphasis on quality assurance and control. The developments concerning the quality management of their HEIs are perceived in terms of quality assurance by the UK respondents. Instead, the Dutch are more occupied with finding ways to “how to deal with” such developments.     

Developing a collaborative pilot programme to promote innovation in higher education focusing on the reward and recognition of teaching

This paper provides a commentary on a significant collaborative international project to set up an effective system for promoting innovation in the Australian higher education sector. This project was the pilot Transforming Practice Programme (TPP), which was run in Australia in 2014. A sophisticated knowledge translation methodology, the TPP was influenced by the UK’s Higher Education Academy’s (HEA’s) thematic change programmes and focused on enhancing the reward and recognition of quality teaching in Australian higher education. The paper explains the intentions of the TPP and how it was run in conjunction with the HEA in both Australia and the UK. Thirteen Australian universities took part in the pilot, and nine UK universities took part in the UK version of the programme. Having detailed the content and process of the pilot TPP, this article also presents details of feedback received via surveys and interviews with participants, and closes with some evidence-informed conclusions on what worked in the pilot and why. Alongside these conclusions, recommendations are outlined regarding what people in other higher education sectors might learn from the pilot TPP.     

Australian universities in the post-Williams period: The impact of public policy on the small universities

This paper examines the impact of the Williams Committee Report on Education and Training on the Australian universities since its publication in February, 1979. In it we discuss the influence of public policy on tertiary education as it has been implemented by the Federal and State Governments of the Commonwealth following the release of the Report.The Federal Government's stated policy in response to the Report was to continue the process of monitoring and adjusting the education system in accord with the Williams Committee proposals for evolutionary change to improve the quality of education. How-ever, because Australian education is experiencing a period of tight economic restraint, it is not surprising that the first tangible reactions to the sections of the Report about universities were to those recommendations about cost, efficiency and availability of tertiary education as well as to those about integration and rationalisation of resources.These outcomes are examined in the context of three Universities, namely, Murdoch University (the Western Australian State Government established a Committee of Inquiry to make recommendations about the future of Murdoch as a result of proposals made by the Williams Committee about it integrating with the University of Western Australia), The University of Tasmania (the Tasmanian State Government took action to follow-up the submission made by the Tasmanian Treasury to the Williams Committee about the rationalisation of resources in tertiary education) and The University of Wollongong (chief executive officers of institutions from the three sectors of higher education in the Illawarra region have reformed an informal advisory group which had operated before the Williams Committee Report was released, into an Advisory Council with a more formal status to explore areas of possible collaboration and cooperation).These reactions have had the aim of broadening the scope of university activities in three of the smallest universities in Australia. In each case, a number of fundamentally important educational and resource issues have been raised and the reactions of the universities have been shaped by public policies. We believe that universities as social institutions should take into account the needs of societies in making decisions about their interests and welfare. It is therefore of paramount importance for universities to be fully aware of relevant public policies and be able and willing to respond constructively.