Constructing a General Framework for Quality Evaluation in Higher Education

Abstract

Faced with the challenges of an emerging knowledge society, higher education systems throughout the world have increasingly realized that meeting minimum quality standards is no longer sufficient and that it is necessary to start the journey to performance excellence. Evaluation in its many forms plays a key role in influencing higher education to move beyond the achievement of minimum or adequate quality to that of pursuing excellence. Currently evaluation functions as a tool for both measurement and improvement. Quality assurance systems in numerous countries, many of them established within the past two decades, have become too crucial a part of this process to any longer be regarded as merely a technical adjunct to the educational process. In this chapter we review some of the context of quality assessment and evaluation and seek to develop a partial, but provocative framework identifying the major factors that determine or influence higher education quality pursuits. From this framework, we argue, one can initiate an exploration of quality assurance across the complexity of different Asia Pacific higher education systems that locates it in the overall policy process. We conclude by directing attention to some current efforts to construct measurable high education quality standards that meet the challenges of difference and variety that characterize the region.