…to quote an academic colleague on quality management of collaborative provision (his hanging preposition, not mine!).
I attended a really engaging presentation from Kathleen Kwan of Mills and Reeve to the Quality Practitioners Group of the Academic Registrars Council on due diligence for collaborative provision in higher education with some useful general principles and some helpful items to consider:
- recognise that collaboration takes time – a relationship and trust needs time to grow (like dating!);
- trust is expensive- work things out for all eventualities while you are on good terms at the start rather than trying to deal with them when the relationship breaks down (think pre-nup!);
- don’t rest a collaboration on one person, make sure it is multi-layered or multi-stranded.
Reputation
- get references and read between the lines. Do informal follow-up to probe further;
- don’t take the claims at face value (they may say they own the land for the proposed new campus – ask to see evidence);
- ask an existing or past partner ‘knowing what you know now, would you do it again?’;
- check to see if the partner is the subject of adverse press or litigation (this can be as simple as googling them);
- is the professional accreditation of the proposed partner current or pending? Is there a difference between being accredited or a member of an accrediting body?;
- spot check information being provided to students to to check on use of institutional name and logo.
Costing/resources
- small things add up. Cost out the running costs, e.g. annual visits;
- recognise that a new partnership will not earn its keep in the first year;
- know the local restrictions e.g. on transfer of money outside a country;
- find out if the other party has the resources to deal with a termination of agreement.
Due diligence varies in each case:
- learn about the country (politics, economic climate, culture, impact of local laws on tax works and data protection, look at the national systems of QA, know what government approvals and permits are required e.g. permission to operate in India);
- look at partners’ objectives and how they align with your own institution;
- know the organisation – their understanding of quality, their strengths and weaknesses, sources of funding and how secure/conditional it is, ask for their strategy for developing staff;
- small student numbers does not reduce the need for due diligence;
- tailor questions to find out what the risks are and identify how they will be managed – be specific and focused.
Managing risk
- ask yourself what the foreseeable risks are and what can be done in response, e.g. when sending students abroad as part of a programme, there is an assumption of a different duty of care because they are going outside the environment they might have anticipated when registering. Much of the institution’s obligation can be discharged through giving clear advance information to students to enable them to make informed choices about the environment into which they are entering.
Case study worth noting: Warwick have a single form for covering all the aspects of a collaborative provision proposal. One key question that they ask of potential overseas partners is ‘Do they have the legal capacity to engage with us in the way that they wish to?’ (e.g. Greece – no joint degrees permitted). They also have experience of setting variable validation fees to cover the particular level of support an individual partner might require; of lighter touch variants for collaboration on a module or for an award of another University; and of dealing with partners who are also clients.
