Higher Education and Quality Assurance: Trends and Tensions in Asia

Abstract

In October of 2006 the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific held their 7th annual conference, the topic of which was: “Towards an Asia-Pacific Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education.” Representing over 200 members from nineteen different countries, participants discussed issues of quality assurance, quality indicators, quality registers, pan-Asia accreditation, as well as other topics related to the desire of universities and colleges in the Asian region to achieve higher standards. This meeting (and the many others that have been held recently in the Asia/Pacific region) is symbolic of the preoccupation that higher educational leaders in the region have with “quality assurance” (QA hereafter). The fact that the top universities in Asia are not members of this association is also significant of the contradictions and tensions that exist in Asia when the issue of higher education QA arises. About the same time, a ministerial-level meeting sponsored by OECD was held in Athens on the topic “Higher Education: Quality, Equity and Efficiency” (OECD 2006), and another meeting sponsored by UNESCO was held in Paris. Asian participation in all of these venues was strong. Finally, as a concrete expression of how tense this issue can be, about 10,000 college students, many of them minorities, rioted and fought with police in Nanchang, China, on October 21, 2006 (Honolulu Advertiser 2006), because the government was not recognizing the academic credentials granted by two new private universities. This was only one of a series of such protests launched because of a lack of credentialing and accreditation of newly established minban, or nongovernmental universities (Jacobs 2009).