Elements of quality assurance at institutions of higher education: Vaal University of technology in South Africa

Abstract

In higher education worldwide there has been a shift from quality control to quality assurance. Quality assurance in South Africa has been seen as an important element in the democratisation and transformation of education. The emphasis on quality assurance in education and training was seen as emancipatory because under apartheid the education which most of the population had access to was of very poor quality. The 'quality' discourse and quality assurance in higher education in South Africa shows that Quality Assurance (QA) is a focus area which is also relatively a new phenomenon and is still in its formative stages of development. This implies that educational institutions are required to establish their own quality management systems. A triangulation approach consisting of interviews, document exploitation and observations were used to collect the data from multiple sources in this qualitative study. To be able to develop a logical argument, the Social constructivist theory will be discussed first, then National Qualifications Framework (NQF)which is responsible for quality assurance, then Vaal University of technology, concepts like quality will first be discussed and this discussion will be followed by an interrogation of standards. Finally, last but not least, a discussion on relevance will be entered into. Managerial implications of the findings are discussed and limitations and future research directions are indicated.