Performance measurement and accountability in higher education: the puzzle of qualification completions

This study explores difficulties in the conceptual positioning of the higher education performance indicator of qualification completion within a standard logic model taken from the public sector performance literature, involving inputs, processes, impacts and outcomes. Organisations are held to be more accountable for the delivery of outputs than the achievement of impacts. Two differing perspectives – (1) that completions are an output measure, and (2) that completions are an impact/outcome measure for tertiary institutions – are explored. Close analysis indicates that the differing perspectives derive from quite different conceptualisations of the student: (1) that the student is a simple customer of educational services, and (2) that the student is a co-producer with the institute. Given their potential impact on institutional accountability, these different perspectives have significant implications for systems of educational policy, specifically in relation to the application of external performance standards to universities.