Ethics in Assessing and Developing Academic Quality

Assessing quality in higher education makes important ethical assumptions, some of them questionable. A more satisfactory ethical view is required if assessing quality in higher education is to be sound. However, political intrusion in system‐wide assessment brings an influence which, preoccupied with market forces and technological development, goes beyond appropriate technical excellence to technicist excess. This generates a climate inimical to ethical quality and conflicts with academic work. Academic development units have a special role in regard to academic quality, but tend to be conceived of in a technicist way. A resultant managerialist‐technicist approach to their task is incompatible with ethical and epistemological virtues necessary to sound academic work and its development.