Transcript Policy context of quality assurance: Role of accreditation

The New Constants in Building University
Excellence: Accountability, Competition, and
Strategic Use of Resources and Opportunities
© Prof. Jan Sadlak
President of IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence
al-Farabi Kazakh National University
November 2011
1
“New higher education landscape”: Evidence and causes of
seeking “excellence” in HE and research
Unparallel changes with regard to the role and functioning
of higher education at the global level due to:
 massification of student enrolment
 big numbers [institutions, providers and programs] and
diversification
 science: global, highly competitive, costly and
economically relevant enterprise
 changes in relations between the state and higher
education
2
Higher education: imperative of progress and competitiveness
Countries are investing in higher education in order to have their own
globally competitive research–intensive institutions as foremost they
are able to make contribution to development of new technologies,
products and services.
The demand for highly qualified and talented students and researchers
is a global phenomenon and universities are making great effort to
attract such people.
University rankings can help to identify such attractive “world-class”
partners.
3
Graduate global pool
•
The annual Education at a Glance 2011 figures for the first time include analysis of education
systems in the emerging economies of Brazil, China, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa,
alongside the figures for the 34 advanced economies of the OECD states:
•
- Expansion of HE in developing countries and emerging economies has meant that the global
graduate talent pool is no longer predominantly in the US and Europe;
•
- China now accounts for 12% of graduates in advanced and emerging economies, with roughly
255 million people with university education [Japan's 11% share of graduates].
Brazil, with 4% of graduates, is catching up with the UK, which has 5%. Korea is approaching
Germany's 4.6% share of graduate talent and has overtaken France and Canada, which each
have 3.6%.
Higher education expansion has strong implications for the overall competitiveness of nations.
The more educated workforces give countries, regions and cities a head start in many high-skilled
areas.
4
Responses to competiveness and “quality challenge” [1]
China: National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and
Development (2010-2020) which has as a principal objective: “to speed up
the transition from the world’s largest education system to one of the
world’s best, and from a country with larger scale of human resource to a
country rich in human resources”. With regard to HE:
- increase of number of students from 29.79 in 2009 to 33.5 and 35.5 million
students in 2020;
- in order to sharpen a competitive edge of China’s higher education
and science accelerate building of first-class universities and faculties
(Project 985)
-opening up of the best faculties to the world, and to participate in or set up
collaborative international academic organizations or global science plans.
Indie: Under the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2012): 8 new Indian Institutes of
Technology, 7 Indian Institutes of Management and 30 Central Universities
[out of which 14 would be “world class universities”].
5
Responses to competitiveness and “quality challenge” [2]
Europe-wide initiatives: Bologna Process
Germany: Excellence Initiative [€ 1.9 billion for the 2006-2011 – 40 graduate
schools, 30 clusters of excellence, institutional strategies to promote toplevel research].
France: Investir Pour l’Avenir: Priorités stratégiques d’investissement et
emprunt national [€ 35 billions of ‘public borrowing’ - out of which € 16 billion
for higher education and research to create some 5-10 world-class
campuses].
Russia: creation of a special category of universities – 2 federal universities
and some 40 national research institutions; automatic recognition of
degrees of the world’s leading universities in order to attract high quality
researchers and professionals (such list may include up to 300 institutions).
Denmark: within a so-called “Globalisation Funds” which foresee support the
foundations for attaining world-class status for some Danish universities and
as a goal “to have at least one university among the top 10 in Europe by
2020 as measured by the THE ranking”.
Finland: creation of cluster universities e.g. Alto University.
Kazakhstan: creation of the Nazarbayev University.
Mergers of universities are also foreseen in Latvia and Czech Republic.
6
Quality, Productivity, Performance
Renewed attention to “quality”, “productivity”, “performance” in
teaching and research at the individual, program, institutional and
system levels.
Importance of various mechanisms for “quality assurance” based on
shared basis for evaluation as well as information which is
readable by a large and diversified stakeholders.
Main mechanisms and instruments:
 Accreditation;
 Benchmarking [peer review];
 Rankings [league tables].
7
Strengths of university rankings
Interpretative notion of “quality” in higher education. Consequently, a
comprehensive assessment of university rankings needs to look at their
strength and limitations.
Strength [arguments in favour of university rankings]:
• provide basis “to make informed decision” when it requires information on
standing and performance of a given higher education institution or its
activities [potential students, parents, politicians, foundations, funding
agencies, research councils, employers, credit rating agencies, international
organizations];
• present information in an accessible format;
• offer basis for benchmarking performance within the national systems and
across borders
• contributes to fostering a competition among HE institutions;
• contributes to the emergence of “centres of excellence”;
• diminishes academic malpractice, fraud and emergence of degree mills;
• give additional rationale for allocation of funds;
• offer additional rationale for selection of partners;
• represents a convenient tool for marketing, policy debates, and public
relations.
8
Limitations [criticisms] of university rankings
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
biased towards the research productivity, encouraging convergence towards a
research-dominated model of the university, therefore reducing the system diversity
[academic drift];
favours research outcomes in natural and life sciences vis-à-vis humanities and arts
[not to mention that in addition to substantially better coverage in bibliometric data
bases, they do not give sufficient credit to books thus do not recognize the value of
textbooks and monographs in research assessment;
does not reflect quality of teaching and leaning function of the university;
does not reflect cultural and social role of the university [the third mission];
apply questionable methodologies in selection of proxy indicators and weighting
scales, and validation of supplementary information [especially that one obtained
from surveys with low response rate];
arbitrary selection of respondents for the reputational surveys;
lack or give insufficient “warning clause” about the methodological limitations of a
particular ranking;
favour strengths of well-established universities and promotes introduction of
hierarchies among HE institutions and members of the academic community;
“come off as well as possible in a ranking” can become an obsession and can result
in unhealthy competition within and outside of HE institutions;
tend to focus on certain academic fields and not comprehensive performance of
entire institution;
hinders open-to-everyone academic cooperation and encourages cluster mentality
which is not in line with an ethos of “academic corporatism”.
9
Reputation and prestige [1]
“Reputation and prestige” represents the group or social ascription of
high performance [activity or product] by particular individual, group,
institution or even country;
Hierachies in reputation are a social reality and is used in various
situations; recruitment, employment, selection of peer reviewers,
selection of institutions, financial credibility, etc.;
“Reputation and prestige” in HE can be influenced in variety of ways:
peers, experts, stake holders [students, parents], media, employers,
professional organizations, international organizations, etc.
“Reputation and prestige” is a marketing tool as well as asset
particularly when HE tries to gain a competitive advantage.
10
Reputation and prestige [2]
An important indicator in many rankings – yet one of the
most contested one;
Who is assessing „reputation“ which is used in university
rankings: „experts“ (in THES); employers and
professionals (in US News); academic
community/professors (in CHE): multiple reputations;
academic community and peers – Nobel Committee
and the International Mathematical Union (in ARWU)
11
Reputation and prestige [3]
Contextuality of „reputation“ of universities:
- as it may differ for different academic disciplines and
other activities [e.g. Athletics];
- It can be vary between different social groups and
stakeholders, e.g. employers vs. professors;
- It can be linked to national and regional aspects.
Reputation is a fairly stable social ascription that changes
slowly over time [but it can be lost fast – academic
corruption].
12
“Reputation” and Financial Autonomy of the University
Financial autonomy [ability to borrow money] is one of key dimensions
of university autonomy [recent scorecard of EUA on university
autonomy in Europe]. Conditions under which such borrowings are
done are determined by “risk assessment” [rating] usually
determined by the rating agency. Reputation plays an important role
in such assessment. Rating agencies have a quite clear view of
what it means.
For example, the largest Canadian rating agency called the Dominion
Bond Rating Service (DBRS) has defined it in the following way:
“The reputation of a university is ultimately its trademark. A strong
reputation will often translate into stronger and less volatile student
demand as it extends the boundaries of the university’s draw
beyond its regional catchment area and into more successful faculty
recruitment and fundraising activities. Information of the used by
DBRS to assess a university’s reputation includes reputable thirdparty university rankings, historical student application statistics
across institutions and admission standards statistics (e.g., yield
rates and entering grades).”
13
Use of rankings for institutional improvement
University rankings as a leverage to do higher education in more effective and innovative ways - the
case of the University of Cape Town (UCT).
Principles on how to think about rankings by agreeing that:
•
advancement in the ranking must never be a goal in itself;
•
the rankings should prompt each discipline to examine what constitutes excellence in that
discipline;
•
the most important goal of research is that it should contribute to the knowledge, make a
difference and have a positive economic and social impact.
The lesson learnt which could serve as a road map:
•
engage academics in open debate without dictating behaviour;
•
raise awareness of comparative data and focuses plans on defining and measuring excellence in
ways appropriate to each discipline;
•
highlight the importance of targeting publishers and journals that have the highest impact –
therefore best visibility – in each field;
•
show the importance of producing graduates that can hold their own in world-class institutions
(strengthens curricula evaluation, supervision, mentorship);
•
see rankings as additional incentive to focus effort and concentrate resources;
•
strengthens the nexus between administration and researchers setting up a common sense of
purpose.
14
Seeking “quality improvement” at the system level: Initiative “Higher
Education for Texas' Future” [1]
1. Measure teaching efficiency and effectiveness.
• Goal: Improve the quality of teaching by making use of a public
measurement tool to evaluate faculty teaching performance that makes it
possible to recognize excellent teachers.
2. Publicly recognize and reward extraordinary teachers.
• Goal: Create a financial incentive to improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of teaching at Texas’ colleges and universities that will help attract
the best teachers from across the nation.
3. Split research and teaching budgets to encourage excellence in both.
• Goal: Increase transparency and accountability by emphasizing teaching
and research as separate efforts in higher education, and making it easier
to recognize excellence in each area.
4. Require evidence of teaching skill for tenure.
• Goal: Highlight the importance of great teachers by evaluating teaching skill
in nominating and awarding faculty tenure.
15
Seeking “quality improvement” at the system level: Initiative “Higher
Education for Texas' Future” [2]
5. Use “results-based” contracts with students to measure quality.
• Goal: Increase transparency and accountability to students with learning
contracts between Deans, department heads, and teachers that clearly
state the promises of each degree program to each student.
6. Put state funding directly in the hands of students.
• Goal: Increase college access and make students the actual customers for
higher education with student-directed scholarships for undergraduate and
graduate education with funding from the state’s current appropriation that
goes directly to colleges and universities.
7. Create results-based accrediting alternatives.
• Goal: Encourage greater competition in higher education and more choices
for students by creating an alternative accrediting body that would focus on
results and the college’s or university’s ability to uphold any obligation or
promise made to the student.
16
Seeking the “University excellence”
There is no agreed definition of “university excellence” but those performing
well in various rankings have the following features:
• Extensive record of international presence, visibility and reach;
• Vision and planning on leveraging its academic strengths;
• Promotes learner-cantered education through programs which encourage
students to pursue studies in variety of fields and interdisciplinary programs
in order to create “breadth with depth”;
• Develops strategic capabilities [as universities are slow systems] by;
spanning disciplinary boundaries, promotes collaborations across academic
units; promotes links between fundamental and applied research;
• Builds networks and partnerships focused on (1) enhancing own research
and providing access to resources which are unavailable in own institution,
(2) advancing promotional activities by reaching to “new audience and
supporters”, (3) enables new educational opportunities;
• Integrates in university structure and culture a commitment to core academic
values, natures experimentation which contributes to the mission and
strategic development of the university;
• Leadership which assures cohesiveness and connects the past and leads
towards future.
17