**5. Assessing quality in higher education**

This study identified four main strengths of quality control and assurance in higher education:


These metrics provide a strong assessment reflecting the lifecycle of delivering academic services to students. Management takes a wider view reflecting their responsibility for quality of the three pillars of teaching, research and engagement, adding engagement with industry and community as an important metric of quality.

Many academic staff self-identified as both teacher and researcher, research active teaching staff. Others see themselves primarily as teachers or as researchers. While these identities contribute differently to university quality, comparison of the result of the UK Research Assessment Exercise and the UK Teaching Excellence Framework suggest a close correlation between teaching and research excellence. This finding suggests the academic identity as both teacher and researcher is particularly valuable in supporting academic quality. The relationship between teacher and student, particularly in terms of access to teachers, was also identified as supporting the quality of the learning experience.

The study identified five main weaknesses of quality control and assurance in higher education, including some overlap with the strengths:


*Quality in Higher Education: Navigating the Academic Business Nexus DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113989*


Exploring the apparent contradiction that academic staff are seen as both a strength and a weakness of quality control and assurance, 81% of staff attributed this to the quality of teaching varying widely. The emphasis on teaching as a determinant of quality was somewhat surprising in the Irish context as teaching quality is not a criterion of the national cyclical review evaluation or internal institutional systems. This incongruence in quality control and assurance is significant, suggesting as it does the need to evaluate and enhance teaching as a criterion of higher education quality.

The business dimension impacts university ability to deliver a quality student experience. Commenting on the potential for quality enhancement:


The above indicators of quality strength and weakness identify the criteria for quality assessment of higher education. Benchmarks focused on other measures of quality or that use proxy measures are less reliable indicators for assessment of education quality. Quality control and assurance techniques and applications need to reflect these criteria to be effective. In the view of 84% of staff quality control and assurance in higher education extends to quality improvement and enhancement of the wholistic student experience. Similarly, 79% of staff identified the quality system as presenting opportunities for the improvement of academic staff performance and wider organization processes, while emphasizing that the quality system should maintain the central focus on the quality of research, teaching and learning.

#### **6. Quality and the academic business nexus**

The proposition that higher education is both an academic and a business endeavor is not widely accepted in Ireland. All Irish universities operate within the state funded public sector. In this study 84% of staff viewed Higher Education as primarily the Pursuit of Knowledge. There was little support for higher education being a public service, let alone a business. Responses to this question uncovered deeply held views on the nature of education, particularly among academic staff.

The manager interviewees were more supportive of the concept of higher education as a public service, but not as a business. One manager commented:

"*Yes, it is a public service because it is publicly funded almost in its' entirety. And the fact the students pay a contribution, that's actually public funding but it's funding from the public except its direct funding from the public as opposed to via the State. So it is a public service. And the Pursuit of Knowledge can be quite abstract when we are trying to be practical and industry focused and focused on employability*".

Within the study survey, 80% of staff disagreed with the view that higher education is a business. This view carried over to the view of 64% of staff that higher education focuses on training for employment. The differences in views on this question of the nature of higher education were explained by staff as stemming from different role-identity staff groups and differences in understanding or perceptions. This finding underlines the significance of the role-group perspectives that are largely unrecognized within quality control and assurance in higher education. The finding suggests the potential of explicitly addressing the different perceptions through use of collaborative and integrative techniques and applications.

For example, 68% of academic staff believe that academic quality is best achieved with a flat management structure. Administration and student services staff take the contrary view that a hierarchical management structure is best to achieve quality. A quality expert commented that this structure issue has little to do with quality. Structure here is used as a pseudo measure for who is responsible for quality control and assurance. Administration and student Support staff are used to operating within a defined hierarchical management structure, while academic staff value their autonomy and academic freedom as a balance to management hierarchy. While not diametrical opposites in practice, there is a tension here between academic collegiate management and administrative bureaucratic management. The equality culture among academics is based on professional knowledge, experience and qualifications, which distinguishes them from the more hierarchical culture in terms of grades and promotion.

While the management interviewees understandably responded somewhat defensively to critique of hierarchical management, they were accepting of the value and importance of engaging the diversity of staff and their professional knowledge. The majority of staff (89%) supported the assertion that quality is best achieved where standards are legitimate, and all staff buy into the virtues of the quality system. There was near total agreement among staff to the need for balance in management focus to support collegiate culture. One manager commented:

#### "*A good manager will create that collegiate focus and will be part of the collegiate focus*".

Similarly, the study found a consensus around the view that higher education quality is best managed through a mix of management and academic measurements. Agreeing in general with this view, the quality management professionals pointed to the complexity in deciding the type of management and academic measurements to employ and how to assemble a balanced mix of measures. For example, student results provide a very convenient, quantitative data set for performance measurement. However, they are a weak quality measurement tool, without context of how the pass rates and results relate to the added value to the student cohort, as students vary considerably by university intake policy and in learning ethos. This question surfaced the

#### *Quality in Higher Education: Navigating the Academic Business Nexus DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113989*

tensions that arise between two distinctive views, a business management view that quantitative measures are good performance indicators and an academic perspective that performance measurement in higher education is more complex and nuanced.

The importance of staff ownership and responsibility in universities encourages a management authority balance within the culture of universities. While directive and decisive management are needed at times, balanced management is needed to encourage staff ownership and participation. In this study 91% of staff confirmed that quality is driven by staff ownership. Management commitment to this balance is itself a driver of quality in higher education, supporting a collegiate culture of ownership. In this research, 75% of staff agreed that management commitment is a driver of quality. Management interviewees fully supported this understanding of their role of management in higher education to support quality control and assurance. This presents a tension for managers between asserting management authority and nurturing collegiate ownership to achieve this balance that supports quality ownership across the organization.

The orientation towards quality control and assurance in universities involves tensions to be navigated by the staff and the organization culture. The balance in management of front-line staff is important to the quality of the teacher-learner relationship, with a direct impact on education quality and the student experience. Similarly, 66% of staff agreed that their independence and ownership of quality requires external scrutiny and accountability to provide the checks and balances that underpin staff ownership.

### **7. Higher education quality culture**

While quality control and assurance are at the heart of quality culture, 61% of staff surveyed referred to the importance of a focus on quality enhancement. The rationale here is that within a learning organization the outputs of quality control and assurance experience should generate ideas and opportunities for quality enhancement. Acknowledgement of the importance of quality monitoring by 54% of staff, contrasted with a view that quality control and assurance in higher education can become bogged down in paperwork, reporting and over-reliance on statistics, such as pass rates, retention rates and completion rates. In the words of one quality manager interviewed:

"*I suppose it may be the perception that we focus too much on statistics… and that we do not actually take a qualitative view rather than a quantitative view from timeto-time. I could see why some staff would feel that way*".

Some skepticism was expressed with the value of assessments of quality in higher education. Management interviewees suggested that higher education quality is more about creating a quality framework for ongoing review of quality, which in their view is not the same as assessment. One manager commented:

"*We're not constantly rigorously testing education quality and we probably should not because you'd tie yourself in knots trying to find the metrics on how to do it*."

The predominant view of 78% staff was that the focus of quality assurance in higher education is a combination of quality enhancement, quality monitoring and some assessment of quality. In this context the quality professionals referred to the circle of quality – plan, organize, control, measure.

The business and competitive environments in which universities operate have increasingly given credence to business like responses to the market. Nonetheless 61% of staff disagreed with the suggestion that the focus of quality assurance is on impression management. Similarly, there was almost universal agreement that traditional industrial models of quality control and assurance do not fit well to higher education. For instance, discipline and technology-based quality, that is central to ISO methodology, does not fit well in universities, though there may be something to learn from those models.

#### **8. Addressing the academic-business nexus**

The growing importance of technology and the knowledge economy has established higher education is a driver of innovation and national economy. However, with this important status of universities has come the desire for greater external control on universities through the legal and financial powers of the state. Striving to protect their independence, universities around the world are adapting to external controls, including quality control and assurance systems. As learning organizations, universities for the most part have managed to integrate these external controls, adapting them to the existing internal quality policies and procedures that achieve what the external quality policy may also be aiming to achieve. Similarly, universities internally have to some extent resisted market forces, so that their quality systems remain predominantly focused on substance rather than form.

In this study, 78% of staff confirmed that the focus of quality assurance was on adapting external quality policies, rather than on adopting external quality policies. Universities generally have pivoted to make external policies their own and fit for purpose. A quality professional commented:

"*Yes, you must make them your own and see how they actually fit in. Because you may already have policies and procedures that achieve what the external quality policy may be trying to achieve as well*".

Three senior managers offered their views on how universities respond to external quality policy:

"*Yes, we don't really tend to blindly copycat whatever we pick up elsewhere. We do have a culture of tailoring it and having our own debate. That's good*".

"*Yes I think we adapt, we localize*".

"*Yes, that would be a practice I would have seen here over the years. Of maybe using templates of other institutions but adapting them to our conditions*".

There remained a concern among 54% of staff that the focus of quality control and assurance in higher education can change to accountability as a priority over improving the quality of operations. In discussion, it was clear that this is not a binary choice, yet business managers displayed a preference for accountability while academic and quality managers were more committed to quality improvement. The multi-factorial, multi-faceted, multi-view nature of higher education operates across the academic-business nexus.
