Impact Evaluation Of Quality Management In Higher Education

This volume works towards overcoming the lack of systematic impact evaluation in higher education, particularly analyses which are not restricted to ex-post gathered data and expert assessments. Since (higher) education is more important than ever in knowledge societies, high priority should be ascribed to quality management (QM) in higher education institutions (HEIs). Consequently, impact evaluation of QM effectiveness is indispensable because it generates the knowledge required for quality (management) improvement. The introductory chapter elucidates the motivation and objective of impact analyses of QM in HEIs and provides an overview of the volume’s other contributions. One chapter reflects on success factors and un-/intended effects of QM, while another one analyses more discoursive ways of evidence-informed guidance of QM policies which are complementary to rigorous impact studies. Five chapters investigate QM effectiveness in HEIs by ex-post and simultaneous impact evaluation in European case studies, including assessments of students, teachers, quality managers, and institutional leadership. The case studies comprise universities from Germany, Spain, Finland, and Romania. The final chapter reports a SWOT analysis of impact evaluation of QM in HEIs, which is suggested as a tool for bridging the notorious gap between the demanding methodology of impact evaluation and its proper implementation. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Higher Education.

The significant growth of number of students enrolled in tertiary education institutions in the recent past decades has caused an unprecedented expansion of higher education systems. The rapid and constant social, economic and technological mutations and international competition make the importance of qualitatively well-educated citizenry and labor forces very decisive. Globalization has developed a powerful impact on the development of higher education and imposes new challenges for the organization (standards, financing, regulations). Systems of higher education tend to detach from the national models and adopt a more "global" orientation. The implementation of quality assurance is one of the recent and most decisive transformations of higher education. Different higher education systems are trying to develop assessment tools (internal and external) to improve the quality of teaching, research and extension activities, and these are either based on experiences of selected countries or are extensively country specific. The quality assurance procedures that were often dependent on national directorial traditions have gradually tended to converge and led to a setup of common tools and standards. Countries under a centralized system tend to impose a uniform and general model while decentralized systems give greater freedom to universities to set up their own quality. International rankings of universities also contribute to impose a set of transnational standards and values, which is also being considered as indicative by the stakeholders. The present book tries to look at the quality assurance mechanism, international rankings and its impact in both absolute and comparative fashion in context of 11 countries from different parts of the world.

Although initially utilized in business and industrial environments, quality management systems can be adapted into higher education to assess and improve an institution’s standards. These strategies are now playing a vital role in educational areas such as teaching, learning, and institutional-level practices. However, quality management tools and models must be adapted to fit with the culture of higher education. Quality Management Implementation in Higher Education: Practices, Models, and Case Studies is a pivotal reference source that explores the challenges and solutions of designing quality management models in the current educational culture. Featuring research on topics such as Lean Six Sigma, distance education, and student supervision, this book is ideally designed for school board members, administrators, deans, policymakers, stakeholders, professors, graduate students, education professionals, and researchers seeking current research on the applications and success factors of quality management systems in various facets of higher education.

This volume of Theory and Method in Higher Education Research contains analyses and discussions of, amongst others, relational working, corpus linguistics, data dialogues, instrumental variables, participatory pedagogy, diverse participation, policy discourse, quality management and knowledge structures of research.

The Global Trends in Higher Education Quality Assurance: Challenges and Opportunities in Internal and External Quality Assurance provides a comprehensive coverage of the trends and developments in higher education quality assurance as they refer to legitimacy/trust, efficiency and relevance.

This book focuses on quality work in higher education, and examines the relationship between the organizational and pedagogical dimensions of quality work in higher education. Bringing together different disciplinary traditions, including educational science, sociology, and organisational studies, it addresses the following principal research question: How is quality work carried out in higher education? The book addresses a wide variety of academic, administrative and leadership practices that are involved in quality work in higher education institutions. The chapters in this book examine core issues crucial in the design and content of study programs, such as modes of teaching, learning and curricula design, as well as institutional practices regarding assessment and quality enhancement. The introductory and concluding chapter present an overarching focus on quality work as a lens to analyse intentional activities within higher education institutions directed at how study programmes and courses are designed, governed, and operated.

This text reports on a series of case studies on managing and assessing quality in higher education from 29 institutions and several national quality agencies, gathered from 17 countries.

This innovative Research Agenda critically reflects on the state of the art and offers inspiration for future higher education research across a variety of geographical, disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. It explores the impact of Covid-19, and the need to re-engage with the Global South and reconsider conventional paradigms and assumptions. Leading international contributors address a set of salient issues, ranging from research on macro-level themes to meso and micro-level phenomena.