The Role of Quality Assurance and the Values of Higher Education

Abstract

Quality assurance, the internal and external examination of the effectiveness and performance of colleges and universities, has always played a crucial role in sustaining and improving the best of what higher education has done in the past in order to build the future. The “best” includes the core values of academic freedom, institutional autonomy and social responsibility. Quality assurance has a history of buttressing and, at times, leading our commitment to these fundamental values. In these early decades of the 21st century, quality assurance has been playing an especially vital role in sustaining core values as higher education takes on the challenges of change and innovation. Quality assurance plays this key role even as we adopt new teaching and learning practices, develop new types of institutions, engage new types of education providers and continue our commitment to expand access and equity in higher education. Add to this the current environment of both the Covid-19 pandemic and the major and painful focus on social change around issues of race and equality, and it is clear that quality assurance efforts are more important than ever.