Towards Learning-Focused Quality Assurance in Chinese Higher Education

Abstract

The concept of ‘quality’ has been contemplated throughout history and continues to be a topic of intense interest today (Reeve & Bednar, 1994). A concern about quality and standards is not new in higher education. Since the mid-1980s, the concept of quality has increasingly influenced discussion around the globe about the role and future of higher education institutions and the academics that constitute those institutions (Watty, 2003). Quality has become a universalising metanarrative (Morley, 2003). Quality and quality assurance issues in higher education have risen to prominence both nationally and internationally (Dunkerley & Wong, 2001). Quality parades as a universal truth continually extends its domain (Morley, 2003). The concern for quality is articulated by university managers themselves, by external agencies deliberately established to assess and reward quality and, increasingly, by the ‘clients’ of higher education – the students, the employers and, importantly, the state (Dunkerley & Wong, 2001). Despite the prevailing use of the concepts and models of 'quality’, many researchers believe that the language and tools of industry-born quality models are an imperfect fit to higher education (Houston, 2008) and the concept of customer-defined quality is problematic (Eagle & Brennan, 2007; Houston 2007; Meirovich & Romar,2006).