Benchmarking and Threshold Standards in Higher Education

Michael Armstrong, Sally Brown, Helen Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135374570
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

The specification of standards in higher education has long been the subject of international debate. This text covers the rationales, operational issues and perspectives on benchmarking and standards from international viewpoints.

Part I

A Rationale for Benchmarking and Threshold Standards

1

Historical and Contextual Perspectives on Benchmarking in Higher Education

Michael Armstrong

This chapter seeks to provide an historical background to the present situation of subject benchmarking and, in so doing, identify the key current issues. The nature of recent changes in the higher education sector, the work of the Higher Education Quality Council, chaired by Sir Ron Dearing, (HEQC), and the report of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (NCIHE) are considered in some detail. The importance of the role of external examiners is discussed and the conclusions of the Graduate Standards Programme (GSP) are contrasted with the Dearing Report's recommendations. The framework for quality assurance produced by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAAHE) is also discussed, particularly in relation to other (business-originated) concepts of benchmarking. Finally, several problematical issues are highlighted in relation to subject benchmarking, including the need for clear guidance from qualification frameworks with respect to unit/module failure and the underlying concepts of learning outcomes and level descriptors.

RADICAL TRANSFORMATION

Higher education in the UK has undergone an extraordinary transformation in recent years. In 1963 there were 26 UK universities and 250,000 students, representing around 6 per cent of the 18–21 age group. The majority of students were male, had two or more GCE A levels (or three Scottish Highers) and were from a relatively homogenous and élite educational background.

The situation today is radically different with respect to:

● the number of institutions that have their own degree-awarding powers;

● the size of the student population;

● a huge increase in the number of mature and part-time students;

● significant growth in collaborative provision with further education establishments;

● the entry profile of students;

● the range and nature of higher education courses (many new types of professional/vocational programmes; credit accumulation and transfer and accreditation of prior learning is now widely used; the vast majority of higher education provision is now modularized or unitized in some form; the traditional single-discipline boundaries of honours degrees are increasingly being eroded);

● a major expansion of postgraduate student numbers, especially part-time students.

Detailed information regarding this fundamental change in higher education can be found, for example, in the excellent ‘background essay’ in Volume 2 of the Graduate Standards Programme Final Report (HEQC, 1997); in the Harris Report (HEFCE, 1996); and in the good contextual introduction in Green (1994).

INCREASING GOVERNMENT INFLUENCE AND DIRECTION

Changes in the political and financial context of higher education have been equally dramatic. The small and élite higher education system of the 1960s was highly autonomous and funded to a very generous level by almost unquestioning governments, whatever their political persuasion. However, the rapid expansion of higher education via the new red-brick universities and polytechnics placed increasing pressure on this comfortable arrangement. Fast growth (to achieve the target of having 30 per cent of 18-21 -year-olds in higher education by the year 2000 – which was met by the mid 1990s) was a government objective because of a perceived need to improve the competitiveness of British industry and commerce by increasing the level of training/skills/education of the workforce in order to take advantage of new technologies and opportunities.

A key element of the government-led transformation of higher education was the need to guarantee value for money and provide public accountability. The concept of market forces was introduced to higher education in very much the same way as it was applied to many other areas of the public sector. It was clear that the government wanted ‘more for less’ – the resources available for higher education had to grow at a slower rate than the participation rate and so higher education institutions therefore had to demonstrate the same efficiency gains as other public-sector institutions. The style of management of higher education institutions had to change as a result, ‘managerialism’ becoming the dominant motif (Trow, 1993).

Of course, stemming from this approach and practical application of market-driven philosophy, there arises the unavoidable question of quality. Does ‘more for less’ mean that the ‘more’ will be of a lower quality than before? This has been the key question for higher education over the past decade.

SPECIFIC DEVELOPMENTS IN RELATION TO QUALITY

With the elimination in 1992 of the binary divide between universities and polytechnics, a single new system of accountability with regard to quality was imposed on two very different traditions and histories. The former polytechnics had been used to the overview of the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA), the activities of HM Inspectorate and the control of ownership by local education authorities. However, the old universities, apart from teacher training, had never been exposed to such systematic external scrutiny. The autonomy of universities was long-held and jealously protected. In 1990, the Committee of Vice-chancellors and Principals (CVCP) set up the Academic Audit Unit (AAU) in response to growing demands for accountability, but this body was not about setting specific standards or promoting uniform systems. Rather, its object was simply to ensure that the universities’ own stated means of quality assurance, whatever they were, were actually being applied.

This clearly did not fully satisfy government requirements with respect to accountability and so the unified sector of 1992 was suddenly exposed to the quality assessment functions of the new Higher Education Funding Councils (the HEFCs). Provision in all subject/discipline areas was to be periodically assessed by the HEFCs and the results, graded on a set scale, made public. Exceptionally poor or good results would have an effect on government funding. With respect to research activity, a similar principle was applied via the 1992 and 1996 Research Assessment Exercises (RAEs) that graded all departments’ research activities and allocated funding accordingly.

In response, the sector itself extended the activity of the AAU by the creation of the new Higher Education Quality Council, which also took on the access and quality enhancement functions of the CNAA. The HEQC periodically audited the quality assurance arrangements of higher education institutions and produced a comprehensive public report. A new single agency incorporating both functions (audit and assessment) began operation in 1998 – the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAAHE). It cannot be overstated that this body is not an agency of higher education itself, as the HEQC was.

A point of note is that the clear government concern with ‘quality’ in higher education did not result in the promotion of the practice and philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM) as such, unlike government efforts in the manufacturing sector and elsewhere (for example, the publication by the DTI of a series of booklets comprising the ‘Management in the 90s’ programme, with titles such as ‘Total Quality Management’, ‘The Quality Gurus’, ‘TQM and Effective Leadership’, ‘The Case for Costing Quality’, ‘Best Practice Benchmarking’ and so on). The key concern of government appears to have been a need to push the sector into of more basic considerations, such as competition, marketing, value for money and public accountability.

STANDARDS ON THE GOVERNMENT'S AGENDA

Government concern over quality in a ‘more for less’ environment of rapidly expanding higher education focused in 1994 on the question of comparability of academic standards. The question asked was very basic and simple: how can we be assured that higher education institutions are delivering the same quality in their ‘production’ of degrees? What is it that is the essence of ‘graduateness’ in the higher education sector?

The then Secretary of State for Education asked this question of higher education collectively in 1994. In the summer of 1994, the CVCP and the Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP) asked the HEQC to consider the development of threshold standards for undergraduate degrees. The HEQC responded with a three-fold strategy, which was to:

● focus on academic standards in the audit process (as outlined above);

● investigate and consult on strengthening external examining (‘strengthening External Examining’ 1996b);

● investigate and consult on the desirability and feasibility of developing threshold standards for first degrees, the Graduate Standards Programme (GSP final report was published 1997).

The definition of academic standards adopted by the HEQC in 1994, after consultation with member institutions, was:

explicit levels of academic attainment which are used to describe and measure academic requirements and achievements of individual students or groups of students

(HEQC, 1997)

From October 1994, due to pressure from government and elsewhere, the HEQC specifically included in its audit process the question of academic standards. Institutions were asked questions designed to establish how they defined and determined their standards, what comparators they used to ensure that their standards were broadly in line with those of their institutions, and how they ensured that their standards were in fact being maintained.

THE GRADUATE STANDARDS PROGRAMME (GSP)

In a small, élite, higher education system, standards could be implicit. Implicit standards were held in a community of practice and belief that was small enough to actually work (although probably only ever within disciplines and not across the sector as such). However, with a mass higher education system, the shared understandings of an academic élite are simply not a sufficient basis for standards. Brennan (1996) points out that the standards debate and comparability does matter because we must not devalue the currency of degrees obtained from the less fashionable institutions. Also that if higher education fails to answer questions about standards and comparability with evidence, they will be answered with prejudice and snobbery (a problem some would say is exemplified in the popular league tables).

Middlehurst (1996) points to four key themes in the standards debate.

● Compatibility: given the recent changes in the higher education sector, can ‘broad compatibility’ of degrees across subjects and higher education institutions still exist?

● Security and reliability: degrees must be reliable in terms of a tradable value as a currency within the higher education and employment markets and the internal systems, and values that ensure that the currency is relatively fixed (rather than floating) must be secure.

● Nature and purpose: expectations of what a degree is will vary over time, and it seems unreasonable to think that they shouldn't. After all, why should standards be the same in 1939 as 1999?

● Ownership and control of standards: the debate about degree standa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I A Rationale for Benchmarking and Threshold Standards
• Part II Operational Issues for Benchmarking and Threshold Standards in Higher Education
• Part III UK Perspectives in the Development and Use of Benchmarks and Threshold Standards
• Part IV International Perspectives in the Development and Use of Benchmarks and Threshold Standards
• Index