This book focuses on quality work in higher education, and examines the relationship between the organizational and pedagogical dimensions of quality work in higher education. Bringing together different disciplinary traditions, including educational science, sociology, and organisational studies, it addresses the following principal research question: How is quality work carried out in higher education? The book addresses a wide variety of academic, administrative and leadership practices that are involved in quality work in higher education institutions. The chapters in this book examine core issues crucial in the design and content of study programs, such as modes of teaching, learning and curricula design, as well as institutional practices regarding assessment and quality enhancement. The introductory and concluding chapter present an overarching focus on quality work as a lens to analyse intentional activities within higher education institutions directed at how study programmes and courses are designed, governed, and operated.

An ambitious, comprehensive reimagining of 21st century higher education Improving Quality in American Higher Education outlines the fundamental concepts and competencies society demands from today's college graduates, and provides a vision of the future for students, faculty, and administrators. Based on a national, multidisciplinary effort to define and measure learning outcomes—the Measuring College Learning project—this book identifies 'essential concepts and competencies' for six disciplines. These essential concepts and competencies represent efforts towards articulating a consensus among faculty in biology, business, communication, economics, history, and sociology—disciplines that account for nearly 40 percent of undergraduate majors in the United States. Contributions from thought leaders in higher education, including Ira Katznelson, George Kuh, and Carol Geary Schneider, offer expert perspectives and persuasive arguments for the need for greater clarity, intentionality, and quality in U.S. higher education. College faculty are our best resource for improving the quality of undergraduate education. This book offers a path forward based on faculty perspectives nationwide: Clarify program structure and aims Articulate high-quality learning goals Rigorously measure student progress Prioritize higher order competencies and disciplinarily grounded conceptual understandings A culmination of over two years of efforts by faculty and association leaders from six disciplines, this book distills the national conversation into a delineated set of fundamental ideas and practices, and advocates for the development and use of rigorous assessment tools that are valued by faculty, students, and society. Improving Quality in American Higher Education brings faculty voices to the fore of the conversation and offers an insightful look at the state of higher education, and a realistic strategy for better serving our students.

The concept of quality in higher education is by no means a new one. By one set of definitions or another, colleges and universities throughout the world have always held the pursuit of excellence as their primary goal. Why then has the quality approach, developed and popularized in industry, and how increasingly applied in health care and government, receiving so much attention in higher education at this moment? What does this perspective add to the approaches to excellence with which they have long embraced?These are the two primary questions that this book seeks to address. Chapters and contributors include: "The New Productivity" by Peter F. Drucker; "World War n and the Quality Movement" by J. M. Juran; "The Quality Approach to Higher Education: Context of Concepts for Change" by Brent Ruben; "The Big Questions in Higher Education Today" by L. Edwin Coate; "An American Approach to Quality" by Marilyn R. Zuckerman and Lewis J. Hatala; "Quality hi Higher Education: Critical Issues in Definition and Assessment" by Brent Ruben; and "Ten Areas for Future Research in Total Quality Management" by A. Blanton Godfrey. The volume is graced with an opening essay by Francis L. Lawrence, president of Rutgers University.Higher education is in the public spotlight today due to the many challenges it now faces: rising tuition costs; frustration about a tight job market for graduates; calls for increased faculty productivity; concerns about political correctness; and criticisms regarding the use of grant and research funds, among others. Quality in Higher Education is a particularly timely book that will greatly benefit educators, university administrators, students, and sociologists, and all those who are interested in higher education today.

For higher education in the UK, the Government is committed to an overt link between quality assessment and funding desicions. However, there is no current agreed definition of quality; and if there is no consensus about what quality is in higher education, how can it be assessed? This book was stimulated by, and reflects some of the debate following the publications of the 1991 Further and Higher Education Bill and its subsequent enacement. It also draws on the preliminary findings of a mayor national research project funded by a partnership of government, business and higher education, designed to develop and test methods for systematically assessing quality. The focus here is on the quality of teaching and learning. The book illustrates the extent to which quality has overtaken efficiency as the key challenge facing higher education in the 1990s. It underlines the growing awareness that institutions are accountable not only to the government which funds them but also , in an increasingly competitive higher education market, to the customers - the students. The book therefore signals the early stages of what threatens to be cultural revolution as profound as that which has transformed the behaviour of organizations in the manufacturing and commercial sectors.

The topic of achieving and assuring quality in every higher education institution continues to be both relevant and urgent worldwide. This volume presents a considered discussion of a range of facets of the issue, drawing on the findings of a 3 year EU research programme involving seven countries: Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Latvia, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia and the Netherlands. Topics include access, student assessment, governance, stakeholders, academic faculty, information and the interface between the secondary and tertiary sectors. The authors, all of whom are drawn from the research teams, explore particular aspects of the research objectives. These aim to identify the drivers and overcome the barriers to establishing high quality in both European higher education, in relation to the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance and, by implication, in worldwide higher education.

Using a range of international examples to compare the reality, purpose and effect of student engagement in universities across the globe, Student Engagement and Quality Assurance in Higher Education argues that teachers and students need to collaborate to improve the quality of university education and student learning. The growing trend of assessing and assuring quality in higher education is incredibly complex, as there are so many variables affecting both experiences and measures. With case studies from ten countries, covering a variety of cultural and environmental settings, this book focusses on ways of working with students to produce applicable, implementable strategies for universities the world over. Internationally applicable, this book presents ideas from a range of cultures, which can be adapted to be implemented in a variety of cultures. The reader is provided with a range of approaches where both the advantages and disadvantages are clearly presented. The ten case studies consider the macro, meso and micro levels of each approach, allowing for an exploration of the growing area of research and practice that is student–staff partnerships, showcasing ways of working with students to enhance engagement and quality, which are vital for a long-term approach. Focussing on one of the main reform topics for universities, Student Engagement and Quality Assurance in Higher Education is essential reading for educational researchers, institutional leaders and all concerned with the implementation and progression of student engagement and quality assurance in higher education.

By bringing together leading experts on quality assurance in higher education from seven countries (from Europe, the USA and South Africa), this volume intends to go several steps further than most publications on the same subject. Containing comprehensive discussion of the most relevant trends in quality assurance regulation, translation and transformation, researchers and policy makers will find an engaged, academic reflection on how quality assurance is embedded in higher education and in a dynamic way to assess its impacts and potential improvements.