CONTENIDO: PAGARÉ E INSTRUCCIONES

The emerging need for quality assurance in higher education over the past twenty-five years has led to the exploration of several approaches to the measurement of quality, but a system that measures standards and outcomes, and the impact of higher education on a student’s intellectual capacities, has been elusive.

While the Bradley Review108 stands in a long line of reports that have concluded that the quality of higher education might be at risk as a result of rapid expansion, it is the first to have proposed the establishment of a rigorous system of quality assurance based on standards and outcomes.

Universities historically have used comparative measures to judge the quality of their graduates, with founding documents requiring that their degrees be at least equivalent to those offered by a pre- existing institution109––Bologna in the case of the early universities; Oxbridge in the case of the first Australian ones; and by the time Monash University was established, its Act required that ‘the standard of graduation in the University shall be at least as high as prevails in the University of Melbourne.’110 These requirements had no measurable criteria, although the ability of graduates to move within the global scholarly environment through admission to postgraduate programmes or academic

appointments became a de facto measure of parity.

Australian universities also have a tradition of peer review, usually at discipline or faculty level, in which academic colleagues assess the comparability of standards. They tend to be periodical, often triggered by the departure of a professor or academic leader, to assist in determining the strategic development of the discipline and the qualities required of a new appointee. They involve a deep engagement between disciplinary peers and, in the case of course reviews, include critiques of course content and assessment to determine whether standards are comparable.

The former Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission and the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee conducted periodical course and discipline reviews, with detailed findings that led to significant reforms. The former colleges and institutes were required to submit degree programmes for approval by accreditation committees, often with majority university specialist memberships, to ensure the comparability of standards between colleges and universities.

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108 _{Bradley, 2008.}

109 _{Hermans & Nelissen, 1994.} 110 _{Monash University Act 1958, s.5 (c).}

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The system for accrediting professional qualifications is perhaps the best example of a rigorous approach that is focused on the measurement of standards and outcomes, even accepting the idiosyncratic nature of some of the professions and their requirements. Because it assesses whether graduates are fit to practise the relevant profession, the process has tended to delve into the quality and currency of the programme. In the case of medicine some universities have received limited or

qualified accreditation pending the rectification of identified problems.

The first Australian quality assurance system emerged from a ministerial policy statement111 that concluded that after a period of significant change in higher education, it was necessary to assure the community that its quality had not suffered. Two per cent of federal recurrent grants was set aside to be distributed among institutions that demonstrated better than adequate quality of provision. In its advice on how this might be assessed, the Higher Education Council reported that quality had indeed suffered as a result of trying to spread too little money too thinly, and creating false

expectations in the former colleges, which had moved into postgraduate education at a rate that could not be supported by the available infrastructure.112 However, the resulting mechanism, which consisted of three annual rounds, had the effect of distributing the majority of funds to pre-1992 universities.113 The degree to which it measured quality is debatable, while it failed to address the acknowledged funding problem.

The Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) was established in 2000, in response to the government’s inability to act against the establishment of a private university on Norfolk Island. To allay fears in existing universities, the government gave assurances that the new system would involve ‘light touch’ quality assurance. Protocols were also developed to define the conditions to be met by new applicants for university status, including a measure of research activity that had not been required of the former colleges and institutes of technology when they were permitted to adopt the university title.114

The breadth of the AUQA remit might have suggested that Australia was about to engage in a

standards and outcomes-focused quality assurance system. It provided for an assessment of ‘the quality of the academic activities, including the attainment of standards of performance and outcomes of Australian universities and other higher education institutions’,115 as well as ‘the relative standards and outcomes of the Australian higher education system and its institutions, its processes and its

international standing’.116

Perhaps because of the ‘light touch’ promise, AUQA chose in its first cycle of audits to concentrate on a measurement of the adequacy of processes for ensuring quality. AUQA reports avoided any

judgement about the maintenance of academic standards; they provided no information on the relative performance of institutions; nor did they comment on institutional performance in an international context.

So, rather than building on existing peer review systems, Australia chose to assess quality at the holistic institutional level, preferring a periodical snapshot and a measurement of processes. This meant that little could be discerned at the discipline or course levels, where one might have expected the most useful evidence about standards and quality to reside. Periodical peer review and professional accreditation continued in parallel but was not recognised as part of the formal quality assurance system.

Yet the need for standards and outcomes-based measurement continued to be raised, with the 2003 Ministerial Statement arguing: ‘Given the expanded choice that will be available to prospective students … it is imperative that information about the relative strengths of institutions be readily accessible. Employers should also have access to information about the capabilities of recent graduates’.117 This

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extension of the audit process was a precursor to the growing realisation that a process-based audit was no longer sufficient to assure the public that standards were being maintained.

This call for more public and transparent quality assurance was being echoed globally as a result of concerns that mass higher education might have led to a dilution of standards. It culminated at a meeting of OECD education ministers in 2006, which concluded that in light of international concern about existing quality assurance methods, systems were needed to measure outcomes, as well as the appropriateness of higher education.118 This led to the establishment of the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) project, an attempt to develop an international measure of standards and learning outcomes that would provide international benchmarks.119 It led the Australian minister to determine that the second AUQA cycle should concentrate on academic standards and outcomes and academic risk.

Reprising these concerns, the Review of Australian Higher Education120 expressed concern that uncapping enrolments and allowing institutions to decide the mix and number of students they would admit might lead to standards being sacrificed for growth. It subsequently proposed that ‘to underpin confidence in the quality of Australian higher education, it is now time to move to a new approach, which demonstrates outcomes and that appropriate standards are in place…. it is imperative that the Australian community has confidence in the standards of its universities and that there is a transparent, national system in place to assure these same standards are required of all providers of higher

education’. It argued that: ‘Strengthened accreditation and quality assurance process are needed to ensure that students receive the best possible education and that employers can have confidence in the quality of education provided to their current or potential employees. Strengthening the sector’s general regulatory, accreditation and quality assurance systems will also enhance Australia’s position in international education’.121

The Review concluded that the existing quality assurance system had not produced the intended results, being ‘too focused on inputs and processes ..[without]… sufficient weight to assuring and demonstrating outcomes and standards.’ It recommended that it be replaced by a new body that would assess standards and outcomes in an international context, including an accreditation and re-

accreditation structure for all higher education providers.122

In response, the government agreed to establish a new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency with extensive regulatory powers.123 In a departure from the quality and standards language, the issue of risk-based and proportionate regulation became a central feature of the new entity, now defined clearly as a regulator.

The legislation establishing a Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) was passed in 2011 and the new Agency came into effect on 1 January 2012.124 The legislation gives TEQSA a high degree of independence and extensive investigative and coercive powers. The Agency is made up of a Chief Commissioner, two full-time Commissioners and two part-time Commissioners. While similar agencies and commissions have tended to combine academic, management and industry expertise, TEQSA has no commissioners with academic experience, and the Agency sees itself primarily as a regulator that will rely on the judgement of its commissioners when regulating institutions.125 By contrast, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, which was established shortly before TEQSA and with similar regulatory powers, has a structure consisting of several accreditation boards made up largely of professionals who can make peer review judgements about a programme’s capacity to meet quality and outcomes standards.