Managing Quality in Higher Education: An International Perspective on Institutional Assessment and Change

Citation

Pennie, I. (2001), "Managing Quality in Higher Education: An International Perspective on Institutional Assessment and Change", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 116-117. https://doi.org/10.1108/qae.2001.9.2.116.1

This book is based on the project “Quality management, quality assessment and the decision making process” sponsored by the OECD Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education. The project involved a series of institutional case studies designed to investigate the impact of different national systems of quality assessment on institutional management and decision making in the individual institutions that carried out the case studies. A total of 29 volunteer institutions from 17 countries (including the UK, a range of mainland European countries, Canada, Mexico and Australia) and seven national quality agencies were involved. The chapters form a series of interrelated accounts of investigations into aspects of the subject, illustrated by the case studies, each with its discrete introduction, discussion and conclusion.

The conclusions are, in the words of the authors “not very thrilling”. Chapter 6 (“The methods of quality assessment in institutions”) concludes, for example, that “Quality management is increasingly formal rather than informal, explicit rather than implicit, managerially organised and controlled, more frequent and more comprehensive. It uses a multiplicity of methods for a multiplicity of purposes. It has become a central mechanism in the management of institutional change in higher education.” Certainly not thrilling stuff – but, then, the objective of the book is not to give readers a thrill. The authors’ stated intention is to inform, illuminate and stimulate debate and appraisal of major changes taking place in higher education in which quality assessment is playing a significant part, and to offer something of practical value to readers.

Their intention is fulfilled. The purposes, methods and effects of quality assessment in an international context is a subject worthy of dispassionate investigation, and the authors set out to investigate it as neither missionaries nor cynics. The result is a welcome contribution of interesting information and careful analysis – and a good, if sometimes rather dense, read. The difficulties inherent in studying and interpreting in an objective way a phenomenon that is multifaceted, complex and in state of considerable flux are reflected, for the reader, in a style of presentation that can be rather dry and uninviting and, at times, frustrating. (There are frequent reminders that the data and information on which the case studies are based is rapidly changing and during the course of the project some new agencies were formed while some whose impact was being studied ceased to operate.) It is worth persevering however. The conclusions remain useful, and many valuable lines of investigation are followed.

A particularly interesting theme is the discussion of a “general model” for a national quality agency, as promoted by the EU, and the conclusion that, beneath this ostensibly usable model lie difficulties that are likely to prevent its promotion either as a description of what happens now in many EU countries or as a prescriptive model for the future.

The reader with a general interest in developments in quality assurance is likely to find it this rather a dry read while serious students will want to look further into the case studies and other ample references to satisfy their curiosity. And, while both may applaud and welcome the agnostic approach, it is hard (though unfair!) not to feel a twinge of regret at the lack of passionate engagement.