This document summarizes a presentation on quality assurance policies in higher education in three countries: Greece, Finland, and the UK. It discusses how each country developed national quality assurance systems and agencies in response to the Bologna Process. While quality assurance is meant to ensure efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, universities struggle with the tension between peer review and performance metrics. The presentation explores where responsibility for quality assurance lies, and tensions between quality compliance and developing a genuine quality culture.

1. IMHE General Conference 2012
Attaining and Sustaining Mass Higher Education
Paris, 17-19 September 2012
Quality policies introduction and micro
level implementation challenges:
experience from three countries
Antigoni Papadimitriou, UiO, Norway
Jani Ursin, Jyvaskyla University, Finland
James Williams, Birmingham University, UK

2. Challenges and QA
Major change in HE
Quality assurance a major element in HE – government perspectives:
• Efficiency - Effectiveness - Accountability
QAAs need to be
• highly flexible
• cost-effective
• not intrusive
(Woodhouse, 1998)
QA Key concerns are:
• information needs, methods for collecting information
• tension between peer-review and league tables
• struggle for responsibility for determining quality
(Newton and Brown, 2009)
“Symbolic and strategic” role of QA (Maassen and Stensaker, 2005)

3. Approach
Research Question:
• What do QA policies reveal about dynamics of different HE contexts and
interplay between macro (EU, nation-states) and micro (HEIs) levels?
Case studies of QA
• Greece
• Finland
• UK
Key themes and issues in current QA
• Explore where responsibility for QA lies
• Explore tensions between quality compliance and quality culture
Data
• Documents
• Secondary literature analysis
• Published research

4. Greece
• 2005 - Greek Government established national
system for QA in HE
• Ministry of Education - QA process would
begin in 2007 (YPEPTH, 2007, p. 12)
• “Evaluation has never been an easy subject to
tackle” Asderaki (2009, p. 112)
• Universities encouraged to set up their own
internal QA mechanisms to provide sound
basis for external evaluation

5. Greece: Studies revealed
• QA /evaluation not “easy” policy change for HE.
• Generally thought that Bologna process was main
driver behind development of Greek QA policy
(Papadimitriou, 2011)
• Until July 2011, 186 university academic
departments out of 281 (65%) submitted self-
assessment reports and 48 of those already
participated in external evaluation (ADIP, 2011)

6. Finland
• 1997 new University Act – universities must
evaluate their basic missions
• Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council
(FINHEEC) established in 1995
• FINHEEC – quality audits since 2005 to evaluate
whether the quality system of a HEI is:
– fit for purpose
– Functioning
– complies with the agreed criteria

7. Finland: Studies revealed:
• Various interpretations of ‘quality’ among academics
• QA perception – various objectives that sometimes are
contradictory
• QA – both positive and negative consequences
• QA systems include both collegial (e.g. peer review) and
managerial (e.g. performance-based evaluation criteria)
mechanisms
• QA systems need to be adequately resourced
• Interaction, communication and training are crucial,
especially when QA systems are being introduced
• Universities make more effort to prepare for audits than
trying to enhance the quality of their basic operations
(Ursin, 2007; Huusko & Ursin, 2010; Ala-Vähälä, 2011).

8. England and Wales
• Modern QA – origins in 1980s
• Massive development in 1990s with
emergence of a single university sector in
1992 (Harvey, 2005)
• 2011 Higher Education Act
• New funding structure and new quality
process taking force in September 2012

9. England and Wales: Studies revealed:
• Perennial challenges face QA in England and Wales
• ‘Quality’ – fundamental (‘what we do’) or ‘tick-box exercise’
• Key distinction – quality assurance and quality improvement (Elton,
1996).
• ‘Name and shame’ vs. on-going continuous improvement
• Learning and teaching – focus of much work on quality.
• Tension between research and teaching: good teaching only
recently a criterion (Drennan, 2001).
• Student experience – now a key pillar of the UK quality system
(Harvey, 2003).
• Quality as a transformative process for all
• Attempts to engage students in quality processes
• Staff – little faith in student feedback questionnaires. Compliant but
not engaged in improving quality; support required
• Student feedback needs to be triangulated with a range of other
information.

10. Responsibility for QA
• Quality assurance increasingly a legal
requirement
• Responsibility for assuring quality in HE – given by
law to a central agency (a QAA).
• Impact of Bologna?
• Institutions are responsible for developing their
own practices but not the judge of quality
• Differences in approach to QA – supportive
(Finland) or measurement (Greece and UK)

11. Compliance or genuine Quality
Culture?
• Is Quality about compliance or developing a
quality culture?
• “Legal requirements do not always ensure
adoption” (Tolbert and Zucker, 1983 p. 27)
• Does quality assurance lead to better university
management?
• Does quality assurance lead to better quality
higher education?
• How do you engage stakeholders in QA
processes?

12. Food for Thoughts
Symbolic and Strategic role of QA

13. THANK YOU!