35

Març 2008

The landscape of quality assurance across Europe is constantly shifting. Countries try one review or accreditation approach for a few years and then move to another one. Agencies come and go and from time to time a strong external force, such as ENQA's Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, causes a rethink or re-evaluation of the arrangements currently in place.

Despite this dynamic scene, virtually all European quality assurance agencies focus their attention either at the programme or the institutional level. Some cover both. The reasons governing the choice can be complex, but typically reflect the history of the relationships between ministries of education and higher education institutions. In countries where universities have been granted greater autonomy, ministries frequently use programme accreditation as a way of retaining some central oversight or residual control over the content of courses. Elsewhere, one of the consequences of institutional autonomy is recognised as being a higher level of public trust in higher education institutions, and it is the way that institutions manage their autonomy that becomes the subject of external quality assurance.

Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Programme accreditation can ensure that there is independent external oversight of the programme itself and this is, not surprisingly, what students often ask for. For an individual student, it is the programme he or she is doing that is of interest; for them the academic management of their university is not so important as the way in which their own programmes are taught or their own learning supported and assessed. For a ministry, it provides reassurance that there is some coherence in the higher education provided, subject by subject, amongst all institutions.

Programme accreditation can, however, also have negative effects, if not carefully designed and carried out. The need to meet externally-imposed criteria can remove or limit the sense of personal and collective responsibility amongst academic staff for the design and management of programmes. It can constrain and even stifle innovation, and, given the overriding importance of meeting the requirements of the external accreditors and their standards, it can lead to a regression towards a compliance mentality which favours the safe but mediocre against the imaginative and adventurous. Perhaps most significantly for quality assurance and accreditation agencies, programme accreditation is an intensive, expensive, burdensome and frequently intrusive process. These dangers need to be recognised and, so far as possible, guarded against.

There are similar pros and cons inherent in institutional accreditation. The strengths of this approach are that it acknowledges the responsibility of the institution for what is provided in its name and accepts that quality can only be assured where that responsibility resides; it allows a greater degree of freedom to innovate; it encourages diversity and choice for students; it values (and assumes) the existence of a mature, internal quality culture; and it is generally less intensive, intrusive and expensive than programme level review or accreditation.

Against this it can be argued that institutional accreditation does not look directly at what is being taught or provided for students; it is inevitably less comprehensive in its coverage; it has to concentrate on management and administrative processes; and the information it provides is, of necessity, less "granular" than that obtained from the scrutiny of individual programmes. Which to choose, programme or institution, for external quality assurance or accreditation? The answer to that question should depend primarily on the purpose of the exercise. If a higher education system (or institution) is young, or if it is only just coming to terms with institutional autonomy, there may well be a need for the micro scrutiny which programme accreditation can provide. The level of a programme's quality assurance will be high, but possibly only achieved at a high cost. If a system or institution is mature, on the other hand, with a proven tradition of autonomy and self-reliance, then there may well be good reason to concentrate on the ways in which they manage their own quality and standards.

Looking across Europe, programme accreditation remains the most frequently encountered approach to quality assurance. But there are clear signs that it is beginning to give way to institutional approaches. Germany and the Netherlands are just two countries beginning to introduce institutional, in addition to programme, accreditation, and there are others which have been following this direction for several years. ENQA's current survey of agencies' processes will provide an interesting account of the developments in this area over the past few years.

It may be that we shall soon be able to discern a "natural history" of accreditation and quality assurance, demonstrating an organic process of maturation from programme to institution, from direct control to earned trust, from standardisation to diversity and from dependency to self-reliance. And perhaps that is the journey that we all are, or should be, ultimately making.