Paths to Quality in Higher Education

1. PATHS TO QUALITY IN HIGHEREDUCATIONWho Runs Higher Education in a Competitive World Salvador Malo28th Rome EAIR Forum31st August, 2006

2. INTRODUCTION - 1 Aims of education in a competitive world • Sense of conflict and challenge • Far from • Whitehead – training the intellect, appreciation of beauty, awakening of human feeling • Newman – teaching, research and services There has been a utilitarian side of higher education • Professions have traded on knowledge • Even in the 19th century when education was used for Nation-Building • Quality in higher education was associated with scholarship and culture • Quality of education was national, not international • Universities, repositories & guardians of knowledge and culture

3. INTRODUCTION-2 • In the 20th century, HE a way to Economic Development • Globalisation announced the race was open to the world • Knowledge Economy set new rules • Many questions to be answered • Who runs HE in such conditions? • Is it the market? And if so, what do we mean by that? • What do we understand by quality? • How can we achieve or enhance quality? • What can we learn from other countries? • Past and present

4. INTRODUCTION-3 • My train of thought • The kind of questions that a group of Latin Americans is pondering upon • The questions whose answers we keep searching together with colleagues from Europe and Canada • Not found a simple answer, … we have learned • Quality in HE arises when individual and social goals converge • This requires to be open to external influences while remaining sensitive to traditions and values • To build a path to quality is to have academics meditate • And in order for academics to do so they must be motivated, take the leadership of initiatives, and work hard to achieve the goals • Quality in the overarching, general sense • Not speaking of assessing learning outcomes • Not of quality assurance or self evaluation • Not of professors and research assessment

5. THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE • The rate and diversity of knowledge leads to • Obsolescence of prior facts and learning • Fragmentation and specialisation • Under these conditions, crucial status of • Collective intelligence • New modes of knowledge production • Shifts in employment and occupation patterns • Jobs, professions and disciplines change, some disappear, others emerge • Will affect knowledge production patterns • Understandably, attention is given to • Core Skills, re-training of the labour force, competencies • Percentage of young entering tertiary education, more general education in university level, flexibility, strength of graduate studies, magnitude and diversity of academic research, university-industry linkages

6. THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF EDUCATION PARADIGMS • Globalisation fosters competition • New consumer habits • Lead in effective forms of production and distribution • Competitiveness is highly dependent on human resources and R&D • Importance of Universities • National Innovations Systems • Competitiveness has extended to educational systems • The importance of certain education models is exagerated • Causality attributed to the link between education and economic develeopment

7. WHAT DOES THE ABOVE TELL US IN RELATION TO HIGHER EDUCATION? “Globalisation has added a new dimension to existing disparities in higher education … The world of globalised higher education is highly unequal … The flow of academic talent at all levels is directed … from … the developing countries to the large metropolitan academic systems… The internationalisation of curriculum, like other aspects of globalisation, proceeds largely from North to South” and arrives speaking English

8. WHAT DOES THE ABOVE TELL US IN RELATION TO HIGHER EDUCATION? “The challenge is to recognise the complexity and nuances of the modern context and then seek to create a global academic environment that recognises the need to ensure that academic relationships are as equal as possible… It is important to ensure that globalisation does not turn into the neo-colonialism of the 21st century” Pillip G. Altbach, 2004 Tertiary Education and Management 10(1) 3-25

9. THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY-1 • What makes some countries rich and others poor David Landes attributes it to “… a huge and growing corpus of scientific knowledge that generates a continuing flow of useful applications…” “…the fact of Western technological precedence is there” • “Linear Model” of Innovation INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH GOODS AND SERVICES ACADEMIC RESEARCH

10. THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY-2 • In Economic Growth Theories, Knowledge was regarded as exogenous, i.e. as given, determined by non-economic forces • In 1990 “ the traditional ‘factors of production’ were redefined. The fundamental categories of economic analysis ceased to be, as they had been for two hundred years, land, labour, and capital. This most elementary classification was supplanted by people, ideas and things… technical change and the growth of knowledge had become endogenous - within the vocabulary and province of economics to explain” • Consequences • That knowledge development responds to market forces. Something recognised before by the ‘national innovation systems model’. • Opened a ‘theoretical door’ for abundance rather than scarcity.

11. THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY-3 • Nelson: the academics “ that hoped for the significant further increase in industrial funding (also) hoped for this funding to ocurr without much change in what academics actually do or in how their research is oriented” “In their firm belief in the linear model of technological advance, (with) academic research providing the basis for technologic innovations in industry, (and) the process not calling for strong influence for what academics actually do” • Cowan: “with a little bit of exaggeration” “If … when thinking about innovation ‘everything matters’, It is quite natural to ask, “Does anything matter more than anything else?’ or ‘Does everything, as input, matter for everything, as output?’ …”

12. THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY-4 • Cowan (Rosenberg): “ The direction of basic research is strongly affected by existing technological products, (that) a big part of basic research picks up phenomena in the outside world, some natural, often man-made, and tries to explain them by asking about their fundamental underlying principles” • In a competitive world, is the faster route to wealth creation and knowledge acquisition (appropriation) that of the Western European tradition? • Easterly reminds us that many of the economies that have developed (or are currently developing) “did it without the aid and recommendations of the West”

13. QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION -1 • Awareness of changes occurred in the last 20 years • Worldwide enrolments in higher education doubled since 1990. • Expansion brought diversification, while world dynamics and market forces were defining the economic development and competitiveness of nations. • Scott: “It is not just that universities are having to adapt, willingly or unwillingly, to a market environment, by competing for students or research funds or adapting a more business-like form of operation. … they have been absorbed into, been taken over by, market relations. But, in the process, those market relations have been profoundly changed. Higher education has taken over the market, just as much as the other way round”

14. QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION - 2 • Middlehurst: “Higher education is no stranger to the ‘market place’. Over centuries, the products and processes of higher education – knowledge creation and transmission; professional practice and development, transfer and exchange; social and political critique – have shaped and responded to different markets” • Frank Newman: “This is a demanding, exciting and risky time for colleges and universities. Suddenly, higher education is in the grip of transforming change. Part of this change flows from the demands of political leaders for access for a greater share of the population to meet the needs of the New Economy; part flows from the impact of external forces such as information technology and globalisation”

15. QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION - 3 • Demanding, exciting and risky times indeed they are. • In a competitive world it is hard for higher education to achieve a proper balance between attending global factors and forces and giving proper consideration to local or regional contexts • The paths to achieving quality remain elusive Marianne Bauer: • “ … a generally acceptable definition (of quality) seems very difficult to reach, … the only realistic approach is a totally relativistic conception…” John Bowden and Ference Marton: “… for any statement that something is of high quality to be meaningful, a range of contextual detail is necessary …”

16. QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION - 4 • In order to achieve quality in higher education, it is necessary to strike a proper balance between the individual dimension and the social dimension of the institution. • In striking that balance, the academics beliefs and actions have to be in harmony with those of the institution. • The closer their beliefs and actions are to scholarship and research, the closer the institution is to what is usually taken to be a university.

17. A LATIN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE - 1 • Latin America’s HE institutions and structure have always followed the pattern of those in pre-Bologna continental Europe. • Latin American HE students -15 million- remain attracted by European universities. • European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean Higher Education Space. • Some academics fear globalisation, others are attracted by it. • Bologna has a special relevance for Latin America. • If nothing is done, Latin America and Europe will follow different paths in regards to HE.

18. A LATIN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE - 2 • 150 university professors from 50 HE institutions in 9 Latin American countries. • Project design is based on • Six professions/disciplines: business administration, chemistry, engineering, history, mathematics, and medicine. • Four analytical axes: Academic Credits, Evaluation and Accreditation, Professional Competencies, and Training for Innovation and Research. • The project recognises the diversity within disciplines, institutions, countries and regions, and respects institutional autonomy. • In the long term the project aspires to contribute to the transformation of HE in Latin America to improve quality.

19. THANK YOU! In searching for paths to quality in Higher Education: “The one lesson that emerges is the need to keep trying. No miracles. No perfection. We must cultivate a sceptical faith, avoid dogma, listen and watch well, try to clarify and define ends, the better to choose means”