In this study, four recent self-initiated educational quality projects at Swedish universities are compared and analyzed. The article focuses on how the universities have handled the tension between external demands and internal norms. The aim is to contribute to an improved understanding of quality management in contemporary universities. On the…

Accountability and quality assurance have become central discourses in higher education policy throughout the world. However, accountability and quality assurance involve power and control. Practices and ideas about quality developed in the Global North are spreading rapidly across the Global South, leading to increased uniformity in the…

In the United Kingdom, the higher education landscape has undergone a transformation since the late 1980s as seen in the "massification" of higher education and the "quality revolution". These changes have resulted in an increased sense of accountability, to principle stakeholders: the government, the taxpayer and students themselves. This paper…

This paper presents the findings of a two-year EU-funded project (DG Education and Culture) "Benchmarking in European Higher Education", carried out from 2006 to 2008 by a consortium led by the European Centre for Strategic Management of Universities (ESMU), with the Centre for Higher Education Development, UNESCO-CEPES, and the Universidade de…

Risk-based regulation is a relatively new mode of governance. Not only does it offer a way of controlling institutions from the outside but it also provides the possibility of making an organisation's achievements visible/visualisable. This paper comments on a list of possible risks that higher education institutions have to face. In a second…

Managing by performance indicators (PIs) is an important and controversial issue for many stakeholders concerned with higher education in the university systems all over the world. This study analyzes the voluntary disclosures of PIs by Canadian universities. The sample consisted of the 44 universities used by Maclean's Canadian Universities…

The existence of information asymmetry has ascended to a significant role in higher education systems. The article makes an attempt to conceptualise the interaction of universities with their environment, stakeholders, and the state by paying special attention to the role and substance of information asymmetry. The existence of information…

Faculty around the world are experiencing changes in their academic work. While "traditional" universities are responding to demands for greater accountability and increased and timely outputs from research, faculty within new higher education institutions (HEIs) are undergoing a paradigm shift within three concentric circles of change. Not only…

As a consequence of the suspension of a system of yearly evaluations of individual courses with student questionnaires, the University of Leuven organised a broad consultation of the academic community focussing on what they expect from a system based on student feedback. The study revealed that this community attaches great importance to a clear…

There has developed moderate discussion in European higher education about the use of performance indicators for both accountability and evaluation purposes. This paper begins by summarizing governmental expectations, institutional objections, and several of the controversies surrounding performance measures. We then report on using performance…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide have been undergoing significant levels of structural change for a number of years, ranging from minor re-alignments of roles and responsibilities to radical changes such as the creation of new roles and new models of operating. This article discusses some initial findings from a recent UK-focused…

The ideal of "bildung" as a goal for higher education and research (HER) in European Union member states is losing ground to more pragmatic goals such as innovation and growth. This shift in the policy perspective about the role of science in society has given rise to a system of multi layered governance which in turn is progressively giving rise…

Increasing attention on quality assurance, a decentralisation of responsibilities and need for quantitative data in accountability and decision support led to the development of a student satisfaction monitoring instrument at Utrecht University (UU). Initially marketing worked as a catalyst activity to prove the added value. At a later stage the…

One issue facing countries in transition concerns how to ensure quality for a broader and more diverse set of institutions. Quality assurance processes (i.e. accreditation, accountability and assessment) have particular relevance today as higher education undergoes dramatic changes in countries in transition, as the world becomes more…

The paper develops an index of "global preparedness" for pre-9/11 US bachelor's degree recipients based on secondary school and college transcript records, and student responses to survey questions in a longitudinal study that covers the period 1988-2000. Only 10% met the most generous of threshold criteria for inclusion. By occupation at the age…