text of the speech at the Seminar on “Emerging Trends Impacting Higher Education: Managing Quality, Competition and Expectations” organized by Knowledge Resources Development and Welfare Group at India International Centre, New Delhi on 31 August 2013.

1. Delivering Quality in Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy: structure and
parameters
By Sanjaya Mishra
Director
Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, New Delhi
At the Seminar on “Emerging Trends Impacting Higher Education: Managing Quality,
Competition and Expectations” organized by Knowledge Resources Development and
Welfare Group at India International Centre, New Delhi on 31 August 2013.
Text of the speech
1. Good Morning to all the distinguished experts and thinkers present here.
At the outset, I am thankful to the organizers for their kindness for
considering me worthy of making a presentation before this august
gathering. I truly believe that there are others in this audience who can
articulate better on this topic than me, and I am humbled by the
invitation to speak before you.
2. The Commonwealth of Learning was established in 1987 by the
Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development
and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources
and technologies. COL is helping developing nations improve access to
quality education and training.
The Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) was
established by COL in 1994 to encourage, develop and foster the
exchange and sharing of educational media techniques and resources,
and promote meaningful and appropriate use of educational media in
Commonwealth Asia. CEMCA has widened its scope over the years to
embrace emerging educational technology formats, even while
broadening the scope of education itself to cover formal, non-formal
and lifelong learning. However, our focus remains “Learning for
Development” and we continue to foster quality improvements through
appropriate use of media and technology.

2. 3. My presentation will focus on some of our current work and my
experiences in promoting quality in Indian higher education. Being a
teacher and trainer in Open, Distance and eLearning, quality has always
been a matter of concern for me, as I have to continuously explain
people around me, including other teachers, institutional decision-
makers, policy-makers, friends, and even family members that the topics
I am engaged in is worthy for everyone. We all have our notions of
quality, and see things from our won angle. I will also speak from my
own experience. I also wrote the introductory guide on Quality
Assurance in Higher Education for the National Assessment and
Accreditation Council, and some of my presentation today will be drawn
from that publication.
4. What quality is? I quote Pirsig (1974) “Quality … you know what it is, yet
you don’t know what it is. But that’s self-contradictory. But some things
are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try
to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes
poof! There’s nothing to talk about it. But if you can’t say what Quality
is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists?
If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes, it doesn’t exist
at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist… So round and
round you go spinning mental wheels, and nowhere finding any place to
get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is it? (p. 179).” Thus, it
actually means many things to many people; it is contextual (for
example if you do not have food, for you the quality if having food; and
if you are in a five star hotel, you may be looking at the presentation and
behaviour of the staff; it happens by design and not by chance; and
needs common understanding by all stakeholders involved.
5. Our understanding of higher education decides the way we look at
quality. The popular understanding of the role of university as centres
for teaching, research and extension has been there for some time now.
But, all have our own understanding of what higher education should do
and what not. Ronald Barnett, a contemporary thinker in Higher
Education states that Higher Education largely does four roles:

3. • Higher education as the production of qualified human resources
• Higher education as training for a research career
• Higher education as the efficient management of teaching
provision
• Higher education as a matter of extending life chances
6. The Delors Commission emphasised the role of higher education as: to
prepare students for research and teaching; to provide highly specialized
training courses adapted to the needs of economic and social life; to be
open to all, so as to cater to the many aspects of lifelong education in
the widest sense; and to promote international cooperation through
internationalization of research, technology, networking, and free
movement of persons and scientific ideas (UNESCO, 1996). For some of
us, it should provide employable skills, and for other, it should promote
innovation and research. Whereas, it is not just one, but multiple views
of higher education that makes what it is.
7. Quality in higher education is all about the “iron triangle”. The biggest
dilemma of educational administrators all over the world is to increase
access to higher education, improve quality, and reduce costs. While this
is possible by using technology enhanced learning systems that my
organization -- Commonwealth of Learning promotes, the same is yet to
be mainstreamed. We see the emerging trends in technology and its
applications such as the Massive Open Online Courses has the potential
to increase access, improve quality and reduce costs. Quality in higher
education is “a high evaluation accorded to an educative process,
where it has been demonstrated that, through the process, the students
educational development has been enhanced … not only have they
achieved the particular objectives set for the course but, in doing so,
they have also fulfilled the general educational aims of autonomy of the
ability to participate in reasoned discourse, of critical self- evaluation,
and of coming to a proper awareness of the ultimate contingency of a
thought and action” (in Barnett, 1992, p 61)

4. 8. Currently I am reading a book entitled “the art of thinking clearly”, and
the author talks of “Swimmer’s Body Illusion” and I think it is highly
contextual to bring this at this juncture, as to how we perceive quality.
Largely, we fall into an illusion trap while making decisions. Dobelli asks
this question – Does Harvard Make You Smarter? “Harvard has the
reputation of being a top university. Many highly successful people have
studied there. Does this mean that Harvard is a good school? We do not
know. Perhaps … it recruits the brightest students around” (Dobelli,
2013). This is true of many of our Indian Higher Education institutions.
9. Now, let me turn to Indian higher education in particular. We are
concerned about rank of Indian higher education institutions in the
Times Higher Education ranking and QS World ranking systems. There is
a need to understand the business of ranking as quality. While there is
some truth about what the rankings show, there are also concerns about
the methodology as well as statistical errors in the processes.
10. A quick analysis of the criteria adopted by some of the well-known
ranking systems will show that these are not contextual, and therefore,
Indian universities are bound to face the difficulty of being on the top
list. In most of these rankings the quality of research is the main focus.
These also look into the income from the industry and number of
international students and faculty. While exchange rates will have
impact on the parity of calculations of the earnings, local policies, cost
and quality of living have impact on recruitment of foreign faculty. So,
for quality to be ingrained, it is better to focus on the processes than to
the indicators of the ranking industry.
11. This brings to quality in inequality. The whole quality paradigm as
applied in education draws from the business and industry. While it has
its own merit, and I will emphasise some points later, we need to
understand the inequality within the educational systems largely
supported and maintained by the Governments as a public good.
Institutions across the country, for that matter across a state/province
do not get equal treatment in terms of funds and encouragement for

5. growth and excellence. So, our efforts to assess quality and ranking are
filled with inherent inequality, and thus, we largely compare oranges
with apples. Certainly the process is not scientific, but is based on
certain perceived values of large number of people. Yet again it is about
“Social Proof”. We do some things, as it is more common and acceptable
in the society. According to Pillai (2006) there are limitations in applying
the market metaphor to education. According to him the products of
education are not really finished products that can be bought off the
shelf. The student (customer) competes to get admission and the
educational institution (provider) often chooses its customers. Though
the customer pays the fees, the output (graduation) is not guaranteed.
The student has to play an active role in the process; and behaves more
like an entrepreneur (investing time, efforts and money) to produce
(acquire) knowledge and skills that are useful in the job market. Thus,
quality cannot and should not be managed in the way it is done in
business and the industry. There is need to rethink quality in higher
education.
12. What we can learn from business and industry for improving quality?
There are certain aspects that we should adopt from business and
industry. The philosophy of continuous improvement is highly suitable to
educational institutions. For that matter, the Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle of
Deming is also highly suitable for adopting in higher education. The
concept of systems thinking is probably common to many of social
systems, and higher education can be viewed as an open system that
should be managed for excellence. Leadership, academic freedom, and
collegial decision making are some other concepts that influence quality
in higher education. The nature of the educational enterprise is complex,
but certainly not immune to application of best practices from industry,
despite its not so similar approaches. It is difficult to fire a teacher in
educational institution for poor performance, whereas in industry, it
may be comparatively easier. In educational institutions, everyone is a
leader in their own sphere of work, and there are lot many freedoms,
but still it is possible to have organizational policies aligned to improve
quality.

6. 13.Therefore, I would urge you to consider the basic parameters of defining
quality and focus on the processes. We at CEMCA believe that quality is
a continuous journey, and is not a destination in itself. We recommend
certain strategies for the institutions to follow continuously to move
towards the moving quality. We focus on use of technology to create an
open environment for learning and research. We focus on development
of policy and capacity building of all stakeholders to improve the
teaching and learning process, as educational transaction is a two-way
process and can’t be measured only by the inputs in the system. The
transformation process and the engagement of the learner in the
process are equally important.
14. Technology as enabler of quality improvement has applications in all the
dimensions of the educational enterprise. Invariably, use of technology
brings in transparency and openness in teaching, learning, research, and
administration. Classroom teaching can be enhanced by appropriate use
of technology in the classroom. Rather than using the class for
information transfer, the opportunity of being in the same place and
time can be used for debate, discussion, and collaborative problem
solving. Technology can help save time in searching and finding
resources and relevant information to conduct research. Appropriate
use of technology can facilitate more time in the research lab or the
sports field.
15. Research being an important aspect of higher education, it is important
that higher education institutions have equal access to research
information. Interestingly, this is not possible in today’s infrastructure
and policies. There is high inequality of access to research information in
our institutions, and therefore, it is important to create an enabling
environment of Open Access to research information and results
produced in our higher education institutions. At a time, when grants,
funding, and industry support are related to research and visibility and
impact of research, institutions should create infrastructure to facilitate
improved access to research work.

7. 16. So far educational institutions taught in a classroom that is only
accessible to certain privileged sections of the society, and outside world
was not aware of what happened there. With technology use,
educational institutions can not only increase access to the educational
resources to more people, it can also improve quality by peer pressure.
Just by putting lecture notes on the web, MIT OpenCourseware became
a wave to reckon with in the higher education sphere, which led to
development of the term Open Educational Resources. Can our
educational institutions share what is happening inside the classrooms?
Our educational institutions should focus on teaching and learning
besides focusing on the building and campus.
17. Improving the quality of teaching, learning, and research in higher
education requires continuous capacity building of teachers and
learners. While teachers need to upgrade their knowledge on latest
developments through refresher and research, students need to develop
capacities as lifelong learners. We do not teach some of the necessary
skills to be successful in many of our institutions; learners teach
themselves successful traits and skills. While universities are not industry
and we can’t have mechanical approaches to teaching and learning, it is
important to help the learners to learn themselves in a systematic way.
18. Prof V S Prasad, former Director of National Assessment and
Accreditation Council argued for a value framework for improving
quality in higher education. He stressed that improvement of quality is a
system-wide activity and all areas of operations and all stakeholders
should focus on the five value framework, covering national
development, global competencies, values, use of technology and quest
for excellence.
19. Finally, I would bring to your attention that if we build systems and
processes that develop common understanding of quality and an
enabling environment for excellence, we will achieve higher standards.
20.Thank you for your attention.