Managing Quality Enhancement

CHES Seminar ‘Managing Quality Enhancement’, Institute of Education, 29-31 May 2008

http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=19039&19039_0=19040

Prof Alberto Amaral
University of Porto, CIPES, Portugal:
New public management, markets and trust

Amaral asked what quality enhancement might look like in the ‘marketised’ (!?) context of higher education.

He argued that markets have increasingly been used as an instrument of public policy and Bologna assumes an internal European market, but he argued that there are difficulties with the idea of a market in higher education. Higher education brings public as well as private benefits that are difficult to take into account within a market; student choices are not necessarily ‘rational’ choices in an economic sense; and the freedoms that characterise a market do not exist in higher education.

The tendency is for Governments intervene to protect ‘consumers’ of higher education – while the state is not a provider of higher education it becomes a principal acting on behalf of the consumer. Amaral pointed to different potential models of government intervention – regulatory (like traffic lights!), or state supervision of institutional autonomy (like roundabouts!). In England, he remarked that there was a contradiction between the rhetoric of the liberal market in higher education and the increasing number of Swindon-style roundabouts!

At the heart of this, he identified a loss of trust between the HE sector and wider society, resulting in greater micro-management by governments through QA systems. In contrast, he pointed to the success of US universities, that had invested in cultivating trust with wider society by articulating their purpose and making its benefits evident. This had then enabled them to resist effectively federal efforts to increase control.

This last idea is the one that I took away to think about – particularly in the context of thinking about how universities can defend their autonomy and identities….and who could resist an analogy that draws on the Swindon roundabout….?

Prof Michael Shattock
Institute of Education, University of London
Managing quality enhancement – is it possible?

Shattock asked if quality enhancement was really possible. His answer was yes, but not through the agency of what he termed the ‘quality movement’.

To explain this he drew upon Thomas Docherty’s critique of the quality movement (The English Question (2008)) as concerned with processes and compliance rather than actual teaching, or the excitement of intellectual enquiry and learning. He pointed to the parallel existence of two universities:

• the official university- which presents the university in public to governments, customers, stakeholders. This is the university of claims of ‘world class excellence’, mission statements and compliance with the quality movement;
• the clandestine university – which is where the ‘real’ work of the university takes place – the pursuit of the unknown, the search for knowledge, the interchange between staff and students – this is where the real quality enhancement can take place.

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How then can this ‘private life’ of an institution be influenced? How can quality enhancement be achieved? Shattock drew upon the model he had been involved in implementing, with success, at Warwick:

• appoint excellent staff; and be prepared to do something about those who are not excellent;
• create a climate of collegiality and organisational structure where staff as professionals participate in the crucial decisions about the direction of the institution and the measurement of performance in teaching and research;
• generate sufficient income to support time and space – for thinking, research, learning and facilities;
• instil a sense of ambition at all levels – be self-critical and competitive;
• be committed to self management, but with an external voice.

In this way, Shattock argues, quality enhancement becomes a dialogue between motivated academics, an exploration of ideas with students – not processes.

Creating the conditions for enhancement depends on the organisational culture of each university, but becoming a self-reliant university involves:

• providing conditions in which a university can work effectively;
• an intensive dialogue between staff and with students;
• staff and students being enthused about learning;
• being comfortable with anarchy!

The distinction between the official and clandestine universities really did work for me in a number of ways – less to do with resistance to the agenda of any particular public body, but more about the difficulty of capturing what it is universities do and how they work as communities, without somehow losing the spark that relates to intellectual enquiry – for me, this is about the intersection of the real and virtual communities of the university (back to Venn!!).

I also came to a new understanding of the Warwick model. As an administrator, I was very familiar with the strong central administrative core of the Warwick approach, but this can seem at odds with the very flexible and entrepreneurial approach that is also taken, positioning the University for arising opportunities. However, Shattock’s description of the ways to affect the private life of an institution clarified the inter-relationship between the core/official structure and the spaces that are created academics and students to get on, with considerable freedom, with the work of an academic community.