Australian Universities already have rigorous quality assurance measures in place that deliver a world-class university system but, according to speakers at a University of Melbourne seminar on August 31, more needs to be done to ensure adequate assessment of student achievement and graduate outcomes.

Professor Alan Robson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia and current chair of the Group of Eight and Dr Hamish Coates, Principal Research Fellow with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) delivered the third in a series of seminars conducted by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) and the LH Martin Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Management on 31 August. The seminar, Quality Standards and Regulation: the start of a new era, examined the role of the new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) in monitoring quality and institutional performance.

Funding for the new agency was announced in the 2009 budget and its establishment represents a core component of the Rudd Government’s response to the Bradley Review of Higher Education. When it is fully operational in 2012 TEQSA will assume the role of national regulatory agency and develop a new quality assurance framework.

Both Professor Robson and Dr Coates argued that a major challenge for the new agency will be in assuring the public that universities are meeting minimum academic standards for students.

Despite the seminar’s title, Professor Robson declined to use the term ‘a new era’ as this implied the university sector would be starting from scratch in terms of quality assurance. He insisted that the existing system of audits, accreditation, state government regulation and reporting; research and assessment exercises and peer review, international ranking systems and reputation indicate there is already a vast amount of quality monitoring going on within Australian universities. 

“Australia has a quality system. It is intensive and rigorous. It’s not perfect, it needs improving but we’ not starting from scratch,” Professor Robson said.

“I would argue that the existing system has delivered a comprehensive high quality university system with universities aspiring to quality and excellence in research, innovation, student learning, teaching, and community and industry engagement.”

Professor Robson argued that the public is primarily concerned with knowing that universities are meeting minimum academic standards. He suggested a method of ‘light- touch’ external examiners would help address concerns over academic standards.

“I propose a system where you have external examiners accredited by the quality agency (TEQSA). Universities choose the examiners from the list. You only do external examination of final year units. You do it once every three years and the results have got to be available for the quality audit when the quality audit comes around. Now that to me is an example of a system that could work. It’s not terribly intrusive and it would guarantee, I believe, minimum standards.”

In his presentation Dr Coates supported an increased emphasis on student assessment in the quality assurance process but warned the setting of minimum standards should not mean all institutions aim for the same standards. There is, he said, a need for universities to aim for excellence and for the system to stimulate diversity.

According to Dr Coates more sophisticated methodologies than setting minimum standards are available and feasible and university sector could adapt methodologies for assessment and reporting currently being used in the schools sector.

Dr Coates said national performance indicators for Australian universities have not been defined since 1989 and it is time we thought through what really counts in Australian higher education. Dr Coates argued that universities need to identify the things that count, set external reference points, collect quantitative data and use it to highlight strengths and identify areas for improvement, provide information to potential students on what they should be doing and assure the public that minimum standards are being met. This would require the gathering of a large and diverse collection of data.

Dr Coates said that the principles around university quality assurance are very complex and the way forward may be difficult.

He called on universities to report the results of quality assessments saying such reporting was an area in which Australia has done quite badly in comparison to other countries in the last few years.

“Satisfying all of these principles is not going to be easy. It’s not going to be quick but it needs to be done if the system is to have the desirable impact,” he said.

Further information about the seminar including video of seminar and presenation slides is available from http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/

This article was originally published in Campus Review on 7 September 2009.

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