Quality in Higher Education: Navigating the Academic Business Nexus

Abstract

Universities are powerhouses of knowledge and innovation where staff are hailed as their greatest assets. Engaging the commitment and innovation of staff is a stated aim of higher education management. However, universities are increasingly challenged by the need to serve many masters, and in particular, to bridge the academic and business culture aspects of the organization. Tensions emerge between the perceptions of staff role groups, the goals of academic endeavor and the business needs of the organization. Organizational and cultural ambiguity can hinder rather than enhance academic quality. This chapter explores the Academic Business nexus, the resulting perceptions and tensions between “tribes and territories” in a higher education institution. The chapter provides insights into orientations towards quality assurance in higher education, with examples from different countries and how they are navigating the Academic Business nexus. The chapter explores the question of the importance of organization culture, values and attitudes as drivers of quality in higher education. Cognizant of the diversity of university profiles, organization structures and culture, the chapter explores changing staff and management views on university quality. The chapter moves beyond the existing focus on management, professional and academic tribes, to address the changing models of universities that bridge the Academic Business nexus and cultivate quality through different approaches.

1. Introduction

Universities strive to promote their reputation as centres of learning, opportunity, enterprise, innovation and social development. Yet the business and financial operations of universities are inseparable from these lofty objectives and aspirations. Hence, the business prowess of universities is often conflated with academic quality. The application of proxy criteria for academic quality to benchmark higher education at national and international level can be problematic. The criteria and techniques used to measure and compare institutions impact benchmark performance. For example, among the top 50 national universities in the US News and World Report Best Colleges rankings there is an estimated 70% correlation between level of university funding and university benchmark performance [1]. When examined further we find these rankings include the following proxy criteria for quality or “Best”:

• Opinions of university leaders

• Alumni donations to the university

• Size of the university endowment

Government and state support, strong research funding, high student fees, large endowment funds and philanthropy form mutually supporting characteristics that enable the “best” universities to trade on prestige and exclusivity. Yet there remains a question mark over this perception of quality and the quality of the student experience measured against specific educational criteria. One might also ask how the other 30% of universities outperform their funding-based rankings within the self-perpetuating wealth centric model.

In contrast to the USA, universities in the European Union (EU) operate a somewhat different model, with measures of quality that value social capital as well as economic drivers. In both the USA and Europe there are sufficient aspects of academic quality at the student experience level that can be controlled and assured to raise concerns regarding the use of proxies for academic quality. In acknowledging the academic and business aspects of university identity and mission, it is important not to conflate these as one and the same.

Within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) the philosophy of quality control and quality assurance has evolved significantly since the Bologne Declaration in 1999 [2]. In addition to quality control and quality assurance, quality enhancement is now central to the EU academic quality philosophy. Acknowledging that different states in the EU are at different stages in higher education quality development, the European Standards and Guidelines [3] guide the development and enhancement of higher education quality across the EU. At the micro level, periodic institutional review, critical self-study and peer review are the key techniques and tools used to underpin institutional quality.

2. The academic business nexus in higher education

In light of the complex and distinctive mission of universities to inspire learning and nurture new ideas, definitions of academic quality based on single stakeholder views are often contested [4, 5, 6]. To capture the essence of inspiring students, nurturing learning and of creating new knowledge, concepts of higher education quality limited to inputs and outputs or to extra-curricular experience or to value adding, do not in themselves provide sufficient insight to the participants in an academic institution [7]. This research based on one university in Ireland, looked inside the black box of quality control and assurance in higher education.

The quality journey in higher education goes beyond the framework of policies and procedures to quality as a lived and meaningful experience from which knowledge and innovation can arise. This dynamic paradigm of quality control and assurance addresses the constantly changing nature of higher education organizations. Shifting job roles, changes in organization mission and higher qualifications among professional staff have given rise to the concept of the “third space”, reflecting the heightened interdependence of different staff roles emerging in Australia and Singapore [8].

Tam [7] contends that in universities, “Quality is a highly contested concept and has multiple meanings to people who conceive higher education and quality differently”. Tam concludes that the varying models of measuring quality are underpinned by explicit and/or tacit differences in understanding and assumptions. The wide range of internal and external stakeholders, with often quite varied vested interests, has resulted in HE quality becoming contested territory of national, industrial, academic, non-academic and student perspectives.

The academic business nexus is central to the organizational tensions in universities. In the EHEA the dominant contemporary view of universities is as an instrument of the state, social cohesion and economic development [9]. Universities could be characterized as finding themselves in a tug of war between academia on the one hand and external stakeholder interests on the other [10].

A study of staff views on academic quality assurance (AQA) was carried out in a university in Ireland to discern and understand the views of the different categories of university staff on AQA. The methodology of the study employed a series of progressively refined survey questionnaires, known as the Delphi Method, and a focus group of the university’s quality assurance managers and executive managers, to illuminate underlying perceptions and tensions between different staff role identities [11]. Over 250 staff participated in the study, self-identifying as 72% academic, 11% administration, 9% student services and 8% management.

3. Staff views on quality control and assurance

The study provided an evidence-based understanding of staff identities and their impact on AQA within the university. Structured around six themes, the study initially documented staff views on quality and the application of quality control and assurance techniques and tools. The study found a range of views on quality management in general, yet with a high level of consensus among the different staff role groups on the value of the key quality techniques and applications in higher education. There was general endorsement across the university for the inclusion of all staff in quality management. In the words of one quality manager:

“Yes, because it reflects all the stakeholders involved in ensuring that what we do provides quality. So, you are getting the delivery side, the administration side in ensuring that all the service areas, and the management thinking in terms of the policy side of what we decide in terms of quality. It’s very much reflective of all the audiences that need to be represented”.

The quality experts in the study confirmed that the focus of quality management is the provision of quality service to students. Responsibility for education quality management was attributed to academic staff by 78% of respondents, with 19% attributing primary responsibility to management and 3% referencing quality management by external bodies. These differing views were considered to arise mainly from the specific organization culture of collegiate participation and to a lessor extent from staff role group identities. While external oversight is an internationally accepted aspect of higher education quality management, over reliance on external responsibility can reflect an internal abdication of quality responsibility.

Different staff role groups held overlapping views on academic quality control and assurance: 63% of management staff and 64% of administration staff viewed academic quality as the primary measurement of a university, while 53% of academic staff and 64% of student support staff expressed the view that education quality goes beyond academic quality as the primary measurement. We see a contrast here in views of quality between staff who interact with students directly and those who operate organization systems.

On the nature of the quality control and assurance system in place, 57% of staff viewed the system as “A collegiate system of excellence” while 38% of Staff viewed the quality system as “Operational policies & procedures”. A danger for quality control and assurance in people-based systems, is that it can be experienced as box ticking exercises. To avoid this pitfall in higher education it is important for staff to embrace quality control and assurance as an essential part of the organization’s commitment to excellence, by continually raising consciousness of the nature and importance of quality. In this study, 78% of staff acknowledged the effectiveness of the quality system in helping to improve quality, an important measure of credibility for any quality control and assurance techniques and applicants. In addition, 66% of staff expressed the view that the quality system also impacted positively on the wider student experience. From the university perspective, allowing for the systemic importance of contrarian views to innovation and education, both management and quality experts were satisfied with this level of support for quality control and assurance, a position that might not be so reassuring from a purely business perspective.

While staff groups expressed some differing views of quality assurance, there was none-the-less a consensus across the staff as a whole. Where staff groups held differing views, leading at times to tensions between groups, the differences were often superficial or even perceptions of difference. The collaborative approach to quality helped to reduce these perceptions of difference and tensions between staff identity groups.

4. Quality tools and applications in higher education

Quality control and assurance in higher education employs policies and procedures to standardize operating practices. There is general agreement that this approach provides clear quality implementation, enforces checks and balances and helps to promote a quality culture among staff. An additional complexity in universities it that these policies and procedures need to be more than a rule book, open to enhancement from internal debate, periodic reviews and external stakeholders. Hence, quality policies and procedures are required to reflect the underlying philosophy of innovation and the overarching framework of university education. This tension between academic and business management perspectives is documented in the literature in Newton’s [12] study of the differences between academic and management perspectives and the follow-up study on these differences by Cartwright [13].

A distinctive feature of quality systems in higher education is the reliance on collegiate academic judgment. In this study, 58% of academic staff and 67% of management were highly supportive of the importance of collegiate academic judgment as a technique in academic quality control and assurance. Education is not a one size fits all in terms of curriculum and delivery, so needs collegiate academic judgment. This feature of quality systems in higher education differentiates the academic orientation from the business orientation of other actors within the university. Closely related to the above is the identification of critical self-reflection on teaching by academic staff as an important technique in quality management in higher education [14].

Seventy percent of staff surveyed agreed that management monitoring of quantitative outputs is important for university quality control and assurance. The reservation expressed was that management monitoring of quantitative outputs in higher education needs to strike the correct balance between standard business measures and those relevant to quality education.

It is unusual to find universal agreement on quality techniques and applications in higher education. However, in this study there was universal agreement that external examiner monitoring of assessment is important for quality control as a type of safety valve. The external examiner systems for assessment and for programme validation were highlighted as two of the best techniques for quality control, assurance and enhancement.

Similarly, student feedback on programmes is a valuable and valued technique for quality management in universities. Despite the subjective aspect of this measurement, it supports the personal nature of education and the student-centred pedagogical approach. It reflects the importance of the relationship between student and teacher for learning. An interesting paradox in the study was both acknowledging the importance of student feedback and yet seeing it as a problematic area leading to tensions. This paradox exemplifies the business and academic cultures touching off each other. Academics apply student feedback to review and improve their module and provision, while remaining mistrustful of student feedback as an instrument of management monitoring, a blunt instrument of performance management. Nevertheless, 94% of all staff agree that student feedback on assessment is an important measure of quality. Interrogating this level of agreement further, identified a managerial culture that interpreted findings in a very specific and rather narrow, procedural way and different to a more reflective academic culture.

Industry stakeholder feedback was considered important for quality, reflecting a feature of higher education quality that external perceptions and market profile impact heavily on business performance, irrespective of the de facto measures of quality within the university. Understanding this business dynamic, university management were slightly more reserved in their support of industry feedback (88%) as a measure of quality, compared to other staff groups.

An interesting finding that emerged from the study was that the greater the level of staff participation within the quality system, the more critical the staff become towards the quality control and assurance techniques and applications. Perhaps this should not be surprising in a university setting where critical thinking is important and encouraged. Critique may be the price of staff participation. Greater staff participation provides a better understanding of quality techniques and applications among staff. This in turn provides valuable critique for quality enhancement and mitigates against risks of superficial measurement and box ticking.

Management commitment itself is viewed as a key element in establishing a viable quality culture that supports the techniques and applications in the quality system. In the words of one quality manager:

“If senior management do not walk the talk, in terms of quality assurance and the culture of quality assurance, it does not happen”.

The importance of management commitment to quality may seem obvious from a business perspective and attracted 91% support from staff in this study. However, it is not just an unquestionable affirmation for management, as it also designates responsibility.

5. Assessing quality in higher education

This study identified four main strengths of quality control and assurance in higher education:

1. Academic staff quality, commitment, motivation, professionalism, integrity and self-reflective were returned as attributes of the academic staff. This response reflects on staff in general, but academic staff is repeatedly mentioned specifically.

2. Quality Standards in operation were also considered as a particular strength, with repeated positive references to policies, procedures and documentation.

3. External Examiners and External Reviews were noted as a strength of a higher education quality system.

4. Student feedback and student involvement in the quality systems were considered important.

These metrics provide a strong assessment reflecting the lifecycle of delivering academic services to students. Management takes a wider view reflecting their responsibility for quality of the three pillars of teaching, research and engagement, adding engagement with industry and community as an important metric of quality.

Many academic staff self-identified as both teacher and researcher, research active teaching staff. Others see themselves primarily as teachers or as researchers. While these identities contribute differently to university quality, comparison of the result of the UK Research Assessment Exercise and the UK Teaching Excellence Framework suggest a close correlation between teaching and research excellence. This finding suggests the academic identity as both teacher and researcher is particularly valuable in supporting academic quality. The relationship between teacher and student, particularly in terms of access to teachers, was also identified as supporting the quality of the learning experience.

The study identified five main weaknesses of quality control and assurance in higher education, including some overlap with the strengths:

1. Academic staff: disinterested; resistant to change; underperforming; too busy to be reflective; not monitored and not supported to do research.

2. Students: the student experience; student unwillingness; lack of awareness among students; plagiarism and unequal treatment of students were given as examples of where students represent a weakness.

3. Quality System: too removed from teaching; emphasis on efficiency conflicting with a quality focus; lack of communication and training for staff.

4. Management: overbearing management structure; managerialism; micro-management; lack of commitment; disregard for staff; short-term focus; loose management practices; management based on pass rates, were stated as contributing to quality management weakness.

5. Teaching: when teaching quality not the highest priority; disconnect of quality assurance from teaching practice; limited internal oversight of teaching quality; and a focus on quantity versus quality, were identified as reasons why teaching can be a weakness.

Exploring the apparent contradiction that academic staff are seen as both a strength and a weakness of quality control and assurance, 81% of staff attributed this to the quality of teaching varying widely. The emphasis on teaching as a determinant of quality was somewhat surprising in the Irish context as teaching quality is not a criterion of the national cyclical review evaluation or internal institutional systems. This incongruence in quality control and assurance is significant, suggesting as it does the need to evaluate and enhance teaching as a criterion of higher education quality.

The business dimension impacts university ability to deliver a quality student experience. Commenting on the potential for quality enhancement:

• 90% of staff agreed that resourcing is needed to improve quality.

• Two-thirds of staff agreed that “speedier reaction times to changes in outside influences” and emphasis on external benchmarks would improve QA.

• 82% of staff agreed that more student evaluation and feedback on all aspects of the student experience improve quality.

• 78% of staff agreed that stronger links with employers strengthen quality.

The above indicators of quality strength and weakness identify the criteria for quality assessment of higher education. Benchmarks focused on other measures of quality or that use proxy measures are less reliable indicators for assessment of education quality. Quality control and assurance techniques and applications need to reflect these criteria to be effective. In the view of 84% of staff quality control and assurance in higher education extends to quality improvement and enhancement of the wholistic student experience. Similarly, 79% of staff identified the quality system as presenting opportunities for the improvement of academic staff performance and wider organization processes, while emphasizing that the quality system should maintain the central focus on the quality of research, teaching and learning.

6. Quality and the academic business nexus

The proposition that higher education is both an academic and a business endeavor is not widely accepted in Ireland. All Irish universities operate within the state funded public sector. In this study 84% of staff viewed Higher Education as primarily the Pursuit of Knowledge. There was little support for higher education being a public service, let alone a business. Responses to this question uncovered deeply held views on the nature of education, particularly among academic staff.

The manager interviewees were more supportive of the concept of higher education as a public service, but not as a business. One manager commented:

“Yes, it is a public service because it is publicly funded almost in its’ entirety. And the fact the students pay a contribution, that’s actually public funding but it’s funding from the public except its direct funding from the public as opposed to via the State. So it is a public service. And the Pursuit of Knowledge can be quite abstract when we are trying to be practical and industry focused and focused on employability”.

Within the study survey, 80% of staff disagreed with the view that higher education is a business. This view carried over to the view of 64% of staff that higher education focuses on training for employment. The differences in views on this question of the nature of higher education were explained by staff as stemming from different role-identity staff groups and differences in understanding or perceptions. This finding underlines the significance of the role-group perspectives that are largely unrecognized within quality control and assurance in higher education. The finding suggests the potential of explicitly addressing the different perceptions through use of collaborative and integrative techniques and applications.

For example, 68% of academic staff believe that academic quality is best achieved with a flat management structure. Administration and student services staff take the contrary view that a hierarchical management structure is best to achieve quality. A quality expert commented that this structure issue has little to do with quality. Structure here is used as a pseudo measure for who is responsible for quality control and assurance. Administration and student Support staff are used to operating within a defined hierarchical management structure, while academic staff value their autonomy and academic freedom as a balance to management hierarchy. While not diametrical opposites in practice, there is a tension here between academic collegiate management and administrative bureaucratic management. The equality culture among academics is based on professional knowledge, experience and qualifications, which distinguishes them from the more hierarchical culture in terms of grades and promotion.

While the management interviewees understandably responded somewhat defensively to critique of hierarchical management, they were accepting of the value and importance of engaging the diversity of staff and their professional knowledge. The majority of staff (89%) supported the assertion that quality is best achieved where standards are legitimate, and all staff buy into the virtues of the quality system. There was near total agreement among staff to the need for balance in management focus to support collegiate culture. One manager commented:

“A good manager will create that collegiate focus and will be part of the collegiate focus”.

Similarly, the study found a consensus around the view that higher education quality is best managed through a mix of management and academic measurements. Agreeing in general with this view, the quality management professionals pointed to the complexity in deciding the type of management and academic measurements to employ and how to assemble a balanced mix of measures. For example, student results provide a very convenient, quantitative data set for performance measurement. However, they are a weak quality measurement tool, without context of how the pass rates and results relate to the added value to the student cohort, as students vary considerably by university intake policy and in learning ethos. This question surfaced the tensions that arise between two distinctive views, a business management view that quantitative measures are good performance indicators and an academic perspective that performance measurement in higher education is more complex and nuanced.

The importance of staff ownership and responsibility in universities encourages a management authority balance within the culture of universities. While directive and decisive management are needed at times, balanced management is needed to encourage staff ownership and participation. In this study 91% of staff confirmed that quality is driven by staff ownership. Management commitment to this balance is itself a driver of quality in higher education, supporting a collegiate culture of ownership. In this research, 75% of staff agreed that management commitment is a driver of quality. Management interviewees fully supported this understanding of their role of management in higher education to support quality control and assurance. This presents a tension for managers between asserting management authority and nurturing collegiate ownership to achieve this balance that supports quality ownership across the organization.

The orientation towards quality control and assurance in universities involves tensions to be navigated by the staff and the organization culture. The balance in management of front-line staff is important to the quality of the teacher-learner relationship, with a direct impact on education quality and the student experience. Similarly, 66% of staff agreed that their independence and ownership of quality requires external scrutiny and accountability to provide the checks and balances that underpin staff ownership.

7. Higher education quality culture

While quality control and assurance are at the heart of quality culture, 61% of staff surveyed referred to the importance of a focus on quality enhancement. The rationale here is that within a learning organization the outputs of quality control and assurance experience should generate ideas and opportunities for quality enhancement. Acknowledgement of the importance of quality monitoring by 54% of staff, contrasted with a view that quality control and assurance in higher education can become bogged down in paperwork, reporting and over-reliance on statistics, such as pass rates, retention rates and completion rates. In the words of one quality manager interviewed:

“I suppose it may be the perception that we focus too much on statistics… and that we do not actually take a qualitative view rather than a quantitative view from time-to-time. I could see why some staff would feel that way”.

Some skepticism was expressed with the value of assessments of quality in higher education. Management interviewees suggested that higher education quality is more about creating a quality framework for ongoing review of quality, which in their view is not the same as assessment. One manager commented:

“We’re not constantly rigorously testing education quality and we probably should not because you’d tie yourself in knots trying to find the metrics on how to do it.”

The predominant view of 78% staff was that the focus of quality assurance in higher education is a combination of quality enhancement, quality monitoring and some assessment of quality. In this context the quality professionals referred to the circle of quality – plan, organize, control, measure.

The business and competitive environments in which universities operate have increasingly given credence to business like responses to the market. Nonetheless 61% of staff disagreed with the suggestion that the focus of quality assurance is on impression management. Similarly, there was almost universal agreement that traditional industrial models of quality control and assurance do not fit well to higher education. For instance, discipline and technology-based quality, that is central to ISO methodology, does not fit well in universities, though there may be something to learn from those models.

8. Addressing the academic-business nexus

The growing importance of technology and the knowledge economy has established higher education is a driver of innovation and national economy. However, with this important status of universities has come the desire for greater external control on universities through the legal and financial powers of the state. Striving to protect their independence, universities around the world are adapting to external controls, including quality control and assurance systems. As learning organizations, universities for the most part have managed to integrate these external controls, adapting them to the existing internal quality policies and procedures that achieve what the external quality policy may also be aiming to achieve. Similarly, universities internally have to some extent resisted market forces, so that their quality systems remain predominantly focused on substance rather than form.

In this study, 78% of staff confirmed that the focus of quality assurance was on adapting external quality policies, rather than on adopting external quality policies. Universities generally have pivoted to make external policies their own and fit for purpose. A quality professional commented:

“Yes, you must make them your own and see how they actually fit in. Because you may already have policies and procedures that achieve what the external quality policy may be trying to achieve as well”.

Three senior managers offered their views on how universities respond to external quality policy:

“Yes, we don’t really tend to blindly copycat whatever we pick up elsewhere. We do have a culture of tailoring it and having our own debate. That’s good”.

“Yes I think we adapt, we localize”.

“Yes, that would be a practice I would have seen here over the years. Of maybe using templates of other institutions but adapting them to our conditions”.

There remained a concern among 54% of staff that the focus of quality control and assurance in higher education can change to accountability as a priority over improving the quality of operations. In discussion, it was clear that this is not a binary choice, yet business managers displayed a preference for accountability while academic and quality managers were more committed to quality improvement. The multi-factorial, multi-faceted, multi-view nature of higher education operates across the academic-business nexus.

9. Concluding remarks

The complex nature of quality control and assurance in higher education revealed itself in this study. While standard business techniques and tools apply to the purely business aspects of the organization, academic quality assurance was most supported by an integrated, collaborative approach to define the quality system and measures that match the organization culture and the education mission.

Faced with multiple demands in a rapidly changing world university models continue to evolve. One such evolution is repositioning at the centre of economic and technological development that has brought universities closer to business models and needing to straddle the Academic Business nexus. Universities have been largely successful in doing so. In this study, 73% of staff confirmed they have a generally positive view of quality control and quality assurance.

Universities pride themselves on their different cultures, ethos and values as well as their education offerings. However, in education essentials they are often more the same than different. Similarly, there are different staff role grouping in higher education with somewhat different academic and business perceptions of the organization. These group differences are in reality less than the commonly held views of difference and tension. Participation, collaboration and integration of staff groupings within quality processes and systems can overcome these tensions.

The apparent and actual differences between academic and business views of higher education are reconcilable. Quality control and assurance systems, tools and applications create natural opportunities for different staff groups to collaborate and integrate.

Quality control and assurance in higher education goes beyond the understanding and implementation of policies and procedures. Higher education quality at its best is a lived and meaningful experience from which knowledge and innovation can arise. This research study was motivated by a need to address the changing nature of higher education organizations. The Academic Business nexus in higher education is at the root of current changes. A widening business focus requires a shift in staff roles and identity, and changes in organization mission. Higher qualifications among profession staff have given rise to the concept of the “third space”, reflecting the heightened interdependence of different staff roles.