From APEC HRDWG Wiki

Economic growth and development in the Asia Pacific region depend on the quality of education and training available. Defining and identifying quality are notoriously difficult and constitute a perennial challenge in higher education; seeking to assure it within higher education institutions is another.

Across the APEC region, approaches to higher education quality have involved both regulatory and voluntary models. The need to create and assure higher education quality has been linked to issues of creating sufficient higher education capacity, assuring important social values such as equity through access, and to the need for graduates to possess qualities and skills that can be meaningfully used in societies experiencing rapid and profound change. As higher education institutions in all countries struggle to adapt to such changes, the issue of how to develop quality in all aspects of higher education and how to sustain it has become a constant feature of the higher education landscape. Despite the challenges and difficulties involved, successes abound throughout the region. In examining instances of success, one is able to discover common elements that are attributes of exemplary practice.

Key Project Objectives

The objective of this project is to identify ways in which quality initiatives are being defined, developed, and practiced within higher education programs, institutions, or governments in the APEC region and in the process discover common and sustainable elements that are attributes of exemplary practice. These elements would include practices that ensure equitable participation in higher education by women. Major project activities will include the examination of papers submitted by practitioners and scholars around the APEC region that describe quality assurance activities, and examine case studies and best practices. These particular and diverse examples will inform common understandings and clarify the interaction among concepts such as access, equity, and finance and their relationship to quality. Papers will be presented and discussed at a 3-day meeting in Honolulu, August 4-6, 2011, followed by publication of the papers and linking of participants through an ongoing network.

The focus of this project directly responds to the priority expressed in the 2008 Joint Statement of Education Ministers at the 4th APEC Educational Ministerial Meeting in Lima, Peru that, “quality education for all is our common goal.” The ministers stated that ensuring that all students receive quality education will help bridge economic chasms within economies and throughout the Asia-Pacific region while it improves the quality of life of citizens and promotes prosperity.

4-6 August 2011 Conference

Quality in Higher Education Conference Delegates

Through the presentation and analysis of case studies of outstanding instances of quality in higher education and its varieties of assessment and through the interactions of the 3-day meeting this project seeks to:

• Initiate a sustained discourse and collaboration that will help identify a common set of referents of quality in higher education and articulate its essential aspects and elements.

• Propose discrete actions and models, based on successful practices that can be adapted to particular circumstances to achieve sustainable improvements in quality across a range of higher education institutions.

Higher education that builds capacity through a skilled workforce, research, and innovation supports human resource development that is inclusive, closes opportunity disparities across the region, and promotes the welfare of citizens and the prosperity of APEC economies. Intrinsic to these issues is the definition of quality. This project seeks to generate discourse that will identify and help define the attributes of quality in higher education across the region in diverse economic, social, and cultural contexts. In the process, it seeks to address the challenges of scalability and sustainability of quality practices.

Cluster Notes

The primary underlying structure of the conference is its organization into four clusters that move from a generalized but disciplined presentation of complexities that make up discussions of higher education quality, to detailed case studies of how quality is manifest. Central to this organization is situating the differing approaches to quality assurance that have been taken in the APEC region, including through multi-lateral and regional approaches.

• Cluster One: What is Quality and what is Quality Assurance? How do we conceptualize QA/Accreditation, variations, and changes in the region? What are the compelling and dominant models of QA? What models seem to work best in given circumstances?

• Cluster Two: Rankings. A force operating throughout the region with continually greater involvement by those within and outside the higher education sector is the phenomenon of university rankings. These have proved highly controversial, but seem to be firmly established as a constant within the APEC higher education environment. This cluster explores the positives and negatives of rankings and seeks to clarify whether they have a critical and important role within formal Quality Assurance.

• Cluster Three: Regional and Country Exemplars. What works well and why? This cluster examines specific instances of acknowledged higher education quality and related assurance processes. Papers will be focused on sorting through the complexities and differing contexts within which higher education quality occurs and seek to determine both the causes of these and how to scale them up. Of particular concern are examples of successful contributions to achieving access and equity.

• Cluster Four: The Global University Endeavor. Throughout the region we observe a concern at the national level to establish at least a small group of national universities as “global” or “globally competitive” universities. Papers in this cluster will be devoted to raising the issue of whether this discourse is a possible way of creating de facto standards of excellence. We wish to raise the question of whether such a compelling idea operating at the policy level within nations is a fruitful pathway toward excellence across the whole of national educational institutions. We also wish to seek to extract from this analysis and presentation further contributions to our inventory of best practices for quality.

Conference Materials

• Conference Flyer
• Conference Agenda

Conference Proceedings and Reports:

Access the complete publication at APEC Publications Database.