A prActicAl guide Benchmarking in european Higher education

Business process reengineering (BPR)
Business process reengineering (BPR) differs from the previous models of
quality assurance in that it is less about setting aims (as EFQM) or individual
tools and processes (as ISO 9000 and TQM) but more about internal processes.
Its major question is how an organisation can best design its processes
to achieve its aims. The approach is one of radical revolution to stop
doing things ‘because that is how they always have been done’ and reconsider
their use. While often criticised as a managerial, control-oriented
approach with the aim to downsize organisations, the positive point for higher
education institutions may be that it directs attention to the actual, internal
operation of the institution (and consequently to the organisation that
performs the operation). In that sense it sets the stage for benchmarking.
Application of industrial models to higher education
institutions
A major conclusion from the educational literature is that although it may
be too categorical to still call the learning process ‘opaque’ (Scheerens,
1987), still our knowledge of it remains limited. Moreover, learning remains
an individual process for each learner/student and it is only partly dependent
on teaching. It is difficult enough for quality assurance models to get
close to the teaching process, but to the extent that they do, they still only
help map, protocol, design, implement, evaluate and improve processes
around learning, but not the ‘creative moment’ of the teacher igniting a
spark in the student’s mind.
Industrial quality assurance models, with their strengths in management
processes and their adaptation to more standardised production processes,
including those in the service industry, may be more applicable to ‘standard’
services within higher education institutions, e.g. student administration,
counselling, library and ICT-services.
Of all forms of external quality assurance, professional discourse, i.e. peer
review, may get closest to the core of the work in higher education: teachers
share their views on education with colleagues and in this way may stimulate
reflection on the daily work (Schön, 1983, 1987) and help spread good practices.
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