**Author details**

*Most of the facilities are key and strongly needed in the school to facilitate teaching and learning. In other words, teaching and learning facilities as well as residential facilities support student learning hence quality delivery cannot be effective without these physical facilities. Nonetheless, facilities form part of any quality assurance measure of every institution hence, their monitoring is a major concern though requires minimum concentration. That aside, there has been progress in recent times concerning the physical facilities of the institution and the massive build‐up give credence to the assertions on* 

From the responses, the importance of giving attention to place by quality assurance frame‐ works is not debatable. It is, however, intriguing that place receives the least attention in quality assurance practice. The reason provided for giving the least attention to place in their quality assurance frameworks is not consistent with the principle of equity in quality assurance prac‐ tice to indicate that place has obtained optimum attention to the extent that attention could be shifted. It should be noted that quality higher education outcomes depend on quality people,

**8. Implications for quality assurance policy and practice in higher** 

assurance to ensure a strategic balance needed for enhanced quality.

There is the need for higher education institutions to be strategic in the framing of their qual‐ ity assurance policies and the practice of same and ensuring that equity is applied to key operational areas of their mandates. This will enable them to balance the foci of their quality assurance frameworks to achieve enhanced quality and also to make their quality assurance frameworks resilient to the changing dynamics of contemporary higher education. In doing so, the conceptual framework of this study offers higher education institutions a more com‐ prehensive frame to classify their operational activities and weigh them on the scale of quality

Even though the study has measured quality assurance policy and practice of the universities involved, on a scale of three dimensions (people, programme and place) as key operational areas, it did not itemise activities under these three dimensions exhaustively. Therefore, not all indicators for quality assurance in higher education have been covered under the concep‐ tual framework of the study. Similarly, the nature of stakeholders' involvement in quality assurance practice was not examined to warrant comments on the adequacy or appropriate‐

It is now obvious that the scale of quality assurance frameworks of the universities involved in this study weighs in favour of programme, and place receives the least attention among the three key operational areas of the universities as defined by the conceptual framework of this

*percentages made in this area. (University C response)*

programme, and Place [33–35].

40 Global Voices in Higher Education

**education**

**9. Limitations**

ness of their involvement.

**10. Conclusion**

