|
by Nigel J French, Secretary-General University Grants Committee
When Catherine Tang first approached me about giving this short talk, she suggested that I might speak about "Teaching and Learning Quality Assurance and Implications for Teaching Staff". I'm afraid I baulked at the second part of this proposed topic, since I am not, and never have been, an academic. I therefore counterproposed that I should confine myself to the first part of the topic suggested and perhaps widen it a bit to describe, as the basis for further discussion, the UGC's overall approach to quality assurance in higher education in Hong Kong.
For this audience I presume that I do not need to rehearse in detail what role the UGC plays, as a non-statutory advisory and so-called "buffer body", in the development and funding of higher education in Hong Kong or what has already been written by the UGC itself on the Committee's current approach to quality assurance. I would simply draw your attention to the relevant sections of two reports, both of which were published in 1996 and are accessible via the UGC Web in our Virtual Library [http://www.ugc.edu.hk]. They are Chapter 4 of the UGC's Quadrennial Report and Chapter 17 of the Committee's Review Report "Higher Education in Hong Kong"2.
I shall nevertheless draw selectively from these documents and others, and add some comments of my own from the perspective of someone who has been intimately involved in the development of the UGC's thinking on these matters as UGC Secretary-General since 1990. I shall also say a few words about the way forward and possible future developments in this area that are currently being considered within the UGC and in consulation with the UGC-funded institutions. Finally I shall be happy to entertain questions and engage in a lively and, I hope, collegial discussion.
Quality Assurance  la UGC
Although the UGC is first and foremost a funding body, the Committee also plays a major role in the monitoring of quality assurance in higher education. By the term 'quality assurance', the UGC means the maintenance of the highest possible standards both in teaching and learning, and in research and service commensurate with an institution's agreed role and mission.
There are various definitions of 'quality' in education in general and higher education in particular, and a substantial literature on the subject, to which several colleagues in Hong Kong have contributed. Such terms as "fitness for purpose", "doing the right thing right the first time", "value-added", "performance indicators" etc. proliferate. There are even those who argue that quality cannot be defined or monitored or assessed, but can only be recognized when seen ie when they see it.
Be that as it may, one common feature of all higher education systems with which I am familiar is that assuring quality, however defined, is primarily the responsibility of the individual institutions, and the institutions are expected to be publicly accountable for it.
In a presentation to the Education Commission in March 1997, Prof Kenneth Young, Chairman of the UGC's Quality Sub-Committee, described the differences in this respect between Hong Kong's universities and the polytechnics and colleges very well. He said:
"In the past, the older universities relied on external examiners to ensure the standard of graduates. More recently, course evaluations have been used more systematically to monitor the quality of course delivery. Traditionally, systems for assuring the adequacy of curricular design and fitness for purpose have been relatively weak. The assumption was that good scholars and elite students would take care of themselves, and that formal systems would only suffocate originality and flair. The assumption was not seriously flawed when only the top 2-3% of the age group in Hong Kong had access to universitiesˇKˇKˇK..
"By contrast, the former polytechnics and colleges had a very tight regime of quality assurance. However, because this regime was imposed externally by the need to gain and maintain accreditation (originally from the [UGC advised by the] Council of National Academic Awards in the UK, and more recently by the Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation), there was sometimes the feeling that the procedures were there to satisfy outsiders, and consequently [gave rise to] some degree of a culture of control and compliance."
With wider access, and especially as we come to terms with the move from an elitist towards a mass higher education system, all the institutions are changing and strengthening their quality assurance practices, because of a growing internal realization of the need to adapt, because of internal and external pressures from stakeholders (students, parents, employers, legislators, etc), and also because of some gentle prodding by the UGC.
The UGC has always had an important role to play in assuring the quality of education provision in all the UGC-funded institutions, albeit at considerable arm's length from the older universities. More recently, in pursuit of its quality assurance role and recognizing the increasing demands for clearer public accountability, the UGC has undertaken a variety of formal and informal academic reviews, including Institutional Reviews of four institutions, Sectoral Reviews of four major subject areas, two Research Assessment Exercises (a third is planned for later this year), one round of Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs) of all the then seven UGC-funded institutions starting from January 1996 and Management Reviews of six of the now eight UGC-funded institutions. No wonder the institutions, not to mention the Committee members, are complaining about review fatigue.
At the same time the UGC has introduced a variety of funding schemes aimed at encouraging the achievement of the highest possible standards of education ie teaching and learning, as well as research and scholarship. These funding schemes include:
a partially performance-based recurrent grant assessment methodology; centrally administered grants for "language enhancement", "teaching development" and other innovative and/or collaborative ventures; centrally administered grants for institutional restructuring and re-engineering initiatives; and, most recently, actual and promised funding for the development of "areas of excellence".
The UGC considers that its position as first and foremost a funding body greatly facilitates its quality assurance role. It ensures that the Committee's advice in this regard is heard and taken seriously, and where appropriate has an effect on institutional behaviour. It also enables the Committee to support new developments and quality improvement initiatives directly and in partnership with the institutions it funds. The "signal effect" of many of the above initiatives is often as important, if not more important than the actual outcomes.
The Committee at the same time recognizes the danger inherent in its dual relationship with the institutions that its advice may impinge unduly on the very academic freedom that the UGC is established to defend. The Committee is accordingly always conscious of the need to maintain the delicate balance between benignly directed support and maintaining an appropriate distance from the day-to-day academic affairs of the institutions.
Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs)
In May 1993, in the context of submitting its advice following the Institutional Reviews of the two former Polytechnics and the then HKBC, the UGC recommended, and the Government subsequently approved, that the UGC should undertake, at intervals of five years, external reviews of quality assurance and improvement processes at all UGC-funded institutions (process audits). Process audits, or Quality Process Reviews, as implemented in Hong Kong by the UGC and in some other administrations, notably the UK and the Netherlands, may be defined as -
| an externally-driven meta-analysis of internal quality assurance, assessment, and improvement systems |
Unlike assessment, these reviews do not evaluate quality itself. Instead, they focus on the processes that are believed to produce quality and the methods by which institutions, faculties, and departments assure themselves that quality has been attained.
Whereas output standards differ across institutions, the standards for judging processes are less variable: core attributes like customer focus, effective performance feedback, and collegial consideration of improvement possibilities would seem to be universally desirable. However, the higher educational institutions in Hong Kong have differing roles, missions and characteristics, and offer programmes in a wide variety of disciplines and in many styles; this diversity is a strength of the system. It follows that the quality assurance processes that may be appropriate for one institution will almost certainly not be appropriate in their entirety for another. Any quality assurance exercise must avoid specifying a template or an ideal model against which to measure process, but must instead review the processes as they exist in each individual institution.
In January 1995, the UGC decided to undertake Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs), of the UGC-funded institutions, in order to ensure that mechanisms for promoting and improving teaching and learning quality in the institutions were in place and functioning as they should.
The TLQPRs were undertaken, during an 18 month period from September 1995 to April 1997, by a specially constituted TLQPR Panel consisting of eight UGC members, fourteen members from the UGC-funded institutions and two overseas experts on higher education quality assurance. All members (or their designated alternates) participated in all the Panel's activities, including visits to their own institutions. With effect from September 1996, following the designation of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) as a UGC-funded institution in July 1996, a representative from the HKIEd was invited to participate in the work of the TLQPR Panel as an observer.
The use of such a large panel, which is a major difference between the TLQPR procedure and that commonly used in similar audits in other countries, was deliberately designed to encourage mutual learning and acceptance of the process locally. As indicated earlier, fourteen of the Panel members, including four of the UGC members, were locally based academics. This it undoubtedly achieved, but arguably at the expense of some consistency and understanding in the Panel's deliberations.
The underlying assumptions of these Reviews were that:
quality does not just happen: it requires leadership, well-designed processes, diligent follow-up, and continuous improvement; teaching and learning quality processes require a significant degree of interaction among academic staff; good teaching does not stem from individual performance only; the quality and consistency of institutional, faculty, and departmental teaching and learning quality processes can be observed; the degree to which staff seek out best practices and work together on teaching and learning quality assurance and improvement also can be observed; the degree to which teaching and learning process elements have been internalized by staff, and especially the degree to which staff feel accountable to each other on teaching and learning quality assurance mechanisms, are more important than the formal aspects of an institution's quality assurance mechanisms; and it is possible and desirable to approach the quality review process holistically, rather than focusing mainly on formalities and written documents.
Throughout the planning, preparation and implementation stages of the TLQPRs, the Panel and the UGC were greatly assisted by a Consultative Committee made up of representatives of all the UGC-funded institutions being reviewed in the first round and, with effect from mid 1996, the HKIEd. The existence of this Consultative Committee, which also took the lead in the organisation of a seminar in April 1997 to discuss the impact and share some of the lessons learned in the first round of TLQPRs and has more recently organised a follow-up confernece on teaching and learning quality, also contributed significantly to understanding and acceptance of the process in the local institutions.
The goals of the TLQPRs were to focus attention on teaching and learning, to assist institutions in their efforts to improve teaching and learning quality, and to enable the UGC and the institutions to discharge their obligation to maintain accountability for quality. These goals were shared by the UGC and the institutions. To emphasise the importance of teaching and learning, the UGC announced that the TLQPR results might be used to inform funding decisions, and indeed in one case so far they have actually done so.3
To assess whether, and if so to what extent, the TLQPRs have achieved their stated objectives, the UGC has recently commissioned a team of expert academic consultants from the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands to undertake a review of the reviews. Meanwhile, I would be interested to hear colleagues' views this evening on the extent to which the TLQPRs have influenced, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, the quality of teaching and learning in the UGC-funded institutions.
Management Reviews
Since the Management Reviews are very much current work in progress, I should just like to take this opportunity of updating you on them before talking more generally about the way forward.
Prior to the completion of the first round of TLQPRs, the UGC had decided to embark on a series of Management Reviews of the institutions. These reviews are aimed at ensuring that all the UGC-funded institutions have in place appropriate and effective processes to manage devolved funds and other resources in support of their institutional aims and objectives. This was and is important given the financial pressures on the UGC-funded sector as it is required by the Government to achieve reductions in average unit costs of 10% over three years.
The Management Reviews, of which six have been undertaken so far, involve a team of UGC members and institutional representatives, supported by a firm of management consultants, looking at the institutions' resource allocation, planning and financial processes. The Reviews also consider how these processes are related to the institutions' roles and missions, as well as their academic objectives. They seek to promote the sharing of experiences and best practice. But their principal focus is on how to assist the institutions in enhancing the quality of their management to achieve their objectives.
The approach to the Management Reviews, which was, like the TLQPRs, developed in close consultation with the UGC-funded institutions through a Consultative Committee, is thus not an assessment of the institutions' management efficiency and cost-effectiveness per se, nor a form of value-for-money audit. The UGC respects the institutions' autonomy in the internal management of their affairs and does not seek to micro-manage. The Committee has also stated that the results of the Management Reviews will not be factored into funding.
The UGC perceives the Management Reviews, like the TLQPRs, as first and foremost a collaborative and formative process. The Committee is very much aware of the pressures facing higher education institutions to achieve more with less, while at the same time maintaining and improving the quality of their primary functions of teaching and learning, research and service. The aim of the Management Reviews is to support the institutions' own efforts at enhancing the quality of their management processes, so that they underpin educational and academic aims effectively.
Areas of Excellence
In its Review Report "Higher Education in Hong Kong"4, the UGC recommended, and the Government subsequently agreed, that the UGC-funded institutions should build upon their existing strengths and develop them into "Areas of Excellence", recognised internationally as of equal status to their peers in the same subject area, and justifying the investment in state-of-the-art facilities and activities which would maintain them among the world leaders.
The Areas of Excellence are not intended to be simply research groups. They could be areas with an emphasis on the transmission of knowledge through teaching, through interaction with industry and commerce, through inter-institutional collaboration and international links. It is also the UGC's and the Government's hope that a significant proportion of Areas of Excellence will be working in areas of direct interest to Hong Kong industry, commerce and culture. The Government's support for the development of Areas of Excellence has been reaffirmed by the Chief Executive in his 1997 and 1998 Policy Addresses, and by the approval by the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council this afternoon of supplementary provision to make good the funding shortfall in the UGC subvention arising from the freeze in tertiary tuition fees for this year (1998-99) at the 1997-98 levels.
While the Areas of Excellence scheme is not a quality assurance initiative as such, it is perceived by the UGC in the same context - namely the encouragement for our institutions to be the best that they can be and for Hong Kong to strive to become a regional centre of higher education.
The Way Forward
Now that the Management Reviews are nearing completion, and anticipating the report of the CHEPS consultants on their review of the TLQPRs, both of which are due by the middle of this year, the UGC has started reflecting on the outcomes of these and its other quality assurance activities and considering the way ahead. In this process the Committee is being further assisted by the Consultative Committees on the TLQPRs and the Management Reviews.
At the same time, the UGC has been seeking to develop and further refine its approach to research assessment by broadening the criteria and assessment methodology to include applied research, the scholarship of integration, and the scholarship of teaching as well as the scholarship of discovery (traditional academic research). In this, the Committee is drawing on the work of the US Carnegie Foundation5.
For the future, the UGC is considering new approaches to quality assurance which will aim to integrate all the different aspects of teaching, learning, research, service and management at the tertiary educational level, principally on the basis of quality process review. In adopting such an approach, in preference to the more demanding and intrusive assessment (except in the case of research broadly defined) the UGC and the institutions it funds will, however, also need to be able to respond to likely further calls for increased cost-effectiveness and accountability. In this regard the role of the UGC as a buffer body, while changing, remains vital for the continuing health and academic freedom of the Hong Kong higher education sector.
|
