Quality Assurance Systems in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

ENHANCEMENT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN APEC MEMBER ECONOMIES
outcome. Following that, the HEI submits the application (some agencies charge a fee), which
sets out the grounds for the appeal against the quality assurance outcome. There are wide
variations in the composition of the body/committee that deals with the appeals and the
powers of the committee.
Some QA systems have standing committees that act as appellate authorities and in some
cases the governing body of the QA agency acts as the appellate authority. A few others do
not have a designated appellate authority and the executive head of the QA body itself might
review the appeals. In some cases the QA agency or its governing board sets up ad hoc sub
committees case by case. But in all cases, the appeals committee is expected to function
independently and provide fair judgement about the appeal.
The power vested in the appeals committee and the action that can be taken after the
appeals committee’s decision varies among agencies. It varies from the appeals committee
making final decisions on the appeal to giving recommendations and impressions to the
quality assurance agency for its consideration. Some agencies specifically provide for an
appeal to the court of law, as in the case of NAA. INQAAHE Guidelines for Good Practice
recommends that depending on the context in which the QA body operates, it has to evolve
an appropriate appeals mechanism right in the beginning and make it known to all those
involved in the process. However, this remains an area that needs further attention.
6.6 Follow-up
After the disclosure of the quality assurance outcome, it is expected that the institution will
take whatever actions are necessary in relation to the recommendations or issues noted in
the review. While funding links, incentives and sanctions may be a motivating factor for many
HEIs to act on the review outcomes, in most systems it is mainly the professional commitment
of the HEIs that leads to actions and improvement.
BAN-PT, NIAD-UE, NAA, SPRING and KCUE do not have any specific follow-up
mechanisms. The responsibility and formal role of the quality assurance agency ends with the
review. The institutions are responsible for the planning and implementation of follow-up
measures. Depending on the nature of the recommendations, ministries of education or other
stakeholders may react on the review.
Quality assurance agencies have built-in follow-up procedures with varying levels of rigour.
Some require binding actions to be taken by the HEIs and in other cases it may be a “soft
touch” based on the professional commitment that can be expected of the HEIs. In Thailand,
Office of Higher Education Committee and Minister of Education monitor the action taken on
the report of ONESQA including the timeframe. ITP-Q requires institutions to act on the report
within 3 months or according to the agreed timeline for corrective actions. NZQA requires
institutions to provide an Action Plan and if this is not carried out satisfactorily within the
timeframe, legislation allows for compliance action. NZUAAU requires the Panel Chair and
the Director of NZUAAU to visit the HEI, 3 months after publication of the report. During that
visit, a timetable for a follow-up report is decided. AACCUP does the follow-up through the
agency staff. If monitoring is needed, PAASCU asks for a progress report after 2–3 years and
arranges an interim visit.
Yet another approach is to link the follow-up to the subsequent reviews. In this approach,
follow-up is the responsibility of the institution, but QA decisions are valid for a specific
duration and follow-up is a strong consideration at the next review. This option links the
quality assurance cycles in various ways. The agency may choose to check on earlier
recommendations and base its subsequent QA decisions on how the institution or program
has acted on those recommendations. In Australia, AUQA follows this approach and
proposes to build the subsequent audits on the outcome of the previous audits where
institutions will have to substantiate how they have acted on the audit outcomes. The HEIs
audited by AUQA are required to make public “a progress report” approximately 18 months
after the publication of the audit report and this progress report will become one of the key
inputs for the subsequent audits. CNAP follows a similar approach.
26