Quality Assurance Systems in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

ENHANCEMENT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN APEC MEMBER ECONOMIES
10. National and International Cooperation
10.1 UNESCO-OECD Guidelines for Quality Assurance of
CBHE
Most QA systems have indicated that they have considered the UNESCO-OECD guidelines
and the implementation is at various levels of achievement. The UNESCO-OECD guidelines
address six different stakeholders. The guidelines addressed to the quality assurance
agencies recognises the diversity found in the various aspects of quality assurance among
the national systems and calls for a coordinated effort at regional and/or global level, in order
to tackle the challenges raised by the growth in new forms of cross-border delivery of higher
education. In general, QA agencies have indicated that they found the guidelines useful.
The key recommendations of the guidelines are about including foreign and for-profit
institutions/providers as well as other non-traditional modes of educational delivery in the
scope of quality assurance, strengthening the network initiatives for the quality assurance
agencies to discuss cross-border education issues, information dissemination on the quality
assurance mechanism and its implications, adherence to ‘Code of Good Practice’, mutual
recognition agreements with other agencies, and making the assessment procedures open to
international peers. As the discussion so far indicates these are the areas where a lot of
changes and mew practices are emerging in the APEC region.
Networks of QA bodies such as INQAAHE and APQN have promoted discussions on
UNESCO-OECD guidelines among their member agencies. To help governments put
systems in place in-line with the guidelines, UNESCO-Bangkok and APQN have jointly
developed a Tool Kit and that has resulted in awareness building among the QA bodies of the
region.
Some QA bodies have stated that they already fall in line with the UNESCO-OECD guidelines
and a few more are initiating actions and projects to build on the guidelines. In the coming
year NZQA will lead a coordinated approach among government agencies, quality assurance
bodies and other key stakeholder groups in a project 'Improving the Quality Framework for
Off-shore Cross-border Education' which will include most of the guidelines. The
Transnational Quality Strategy of Australia gives due recognition to the UNESO-OECD
guidelines and the national quality assurance agency of Australia states that its QA practices
are already in accordance to the UNESCO-OECD guidelines.
There are also a few responses that indicate that either the agencies are yet to become
familiar with the guidelines or of the opinion that the guidelines are too general to be of any
use to them.
This is still a developing area and a lot of discussions are going on.
10.2 Cooperation
There are only a few examples of cooperation between economies and they are in the form of
Memoranda of Understanding. For example, the New Zealand government has a
memorandum of understanding with the Malaysian government, whereby any local
qualifications delivered in Malaysia must meet Malaysian as well as NZ quality assurance
standards. The government of Australia has agreements with Malaysia, Thailand, New
Zealand and Japan.
AUQA has memoranda of cooperation (MoC) with a number of other QA agencies of the
region. In each case the general purpose is for further mutual understanding and trust, but
each also has one or more specific purposes. As mentioned above, the focus of the MoC with
NZUAAU is the contribution of New Zealand good practices to AUQA’s Good Practice
Database. With the HKCAA, the objective is sharing information about Australian institutions
operating in Hong Kong. Discussions are under way with the MQA on a MoC that would
emphasise joint audits of Australian campuses in Malaysia; and with the Shanghai Education
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