Maria Mendel University of Gdansk, Poland pedmm@ug.pl

1. Baltic Sea Universities NetworkThe 10th Baltic Seminar of University AdministratorsRole of governing bodies in higher education. Recent developments in higher education governanceRiga, Latvia, 14-15 May 2009 The ways universities assure.RHEA in Gdansk Maria Mendel University of Gdansk, Poland pedmm@ug.edu.pl

2. The contextual understanding of quality assurance in Polish universities • The sources of popular thinking and the dilemmas it evokes: • Global and local (glocal): • Market-driven world (economic rationalisation of social life): increasing role of measurement and parametric assessments; knowledge-based society = credential society; academic capitalism and lack of sense of education when professors don’t care of their students; mass-higher education = lack of work. • DILEMMAS: increasing feeling of false in the university performances (meanings of ‘not fair game’, ‘political cheating’, etc.); ‘everybody knows’ that university education is incomplete and hardly acceptable as ‘fair’. • Specifically Polish: • process of social, political and educational transition .Democracy under construction’ and testimony of former system (people’s ambivalent approach to the institutions, lack of trust in public sphere, etc.). • DILEMMAS: one could ask: It is not in accordance: to be honest and talk of quality assurance in Polish HEI. • Thus ambiguity and frustration become the features of now-a-day rhetoric in which Polish academics approach the issue of HE quality assurance.

3. Redesigning of thinking: democracy in quality assurance - RHEA - • Redesigning of Higher Education and Academy - RHEA (www.ug.edu.pl) • This is a period of every-year conferences (2-3 per year) called RHEA, the name that metaphorically refers to mythical Mother of Gods. • Gdansk RHEA is planned to ‘give the birth’ the excellence understood as good - democratic and including all the voices of HEI’s stakeholders - discursive practice of quality assurance. • It means: • 1. to soften the autocracy of contemporary university • 2. to deliver: • democracy in quality assurance • democratising quality assurance..

4. How to get such things done? The basic attempts to democratise quality assurance • Following the concept by Lee Harvey [1992;2008] and in the light of RHEA results we may say that: • On the one hand UNIVERSITIES LOOK/FEEL AUTOCRATIC (perhaps that is the fate of quality assurance). • On the other they are BASTIONS OF DEMOCRACY through their social critical role. • QUALITY NEEDS DEMOCRATISING (it needs to be a more democratic process) • QUALITY IS A DEMOCRATISING PROCESS (it acts as agent for democracy) • Therefore we ought to develop and appeal for • AN INCLUSIVE QUALITY ASSURANCE APPROACH

5. Thus RHEA conferences are aimed to: • establish the HE community (in local, regional, national and European level), network of different entities and individuals (such as university people: students, academics and administrators, international and Polish invited speakers, Bologna Experts, etc.) mutually involved in critical thinking and reflective work on higher education, research, development, and university management. • give them a chance to the peer-reviewing via RHEA conferences’ forum: discussions, debates, exchanges of their experiences and their critical opinions. • Peers are insiders to the sector, provide insight, understand issues and are, therefore, supporting and sharing [Harvey 2008].

6. The ways universities assure...Towards democratising quality • AGENCIES OR INSIDERS? • Maybe quality assurance, to become democratic, needs to focus not on external agendas but the internal agendas of higher education institutions (...) Democracy in quality assurance is not achieved by agencies (...) [Harvey, 2009]. • This is essential in an inclusive quality assurance approach. The university insiders are stakeholders being able to evaluate themselves for the best results. • HOW WILL QUALITY BE ASSESSED? • The external quality assurance methodology (represented in majority of the procedures) caused some concern in institutions as it ‘involves outside assessors going into institutions and, among other things, observing what takes place in teaching and learning situations’ [Harvey 2008]. • The internal, inclusive quality assurance approach seems to identify the nature of quality, assess the perceptions of different stakeholders and attempt to identify a flexible and dynamic methodology that will take account of the disparate perspectives and ever changing circumstances [Harvey, Burrows and Green, 1992].

7. What else? The nearest future... • 2008-2009 • RHEA conferences: • 1. School and university education: system cohesion or a big gap (November 2008) - with participation of Minister of Education and Vice-Minister of Science and Higher Education • 2. The quality assurance and internal systems of quality assurance (March 2009) - with prof. Hakan Hult (Linkoping University) and the experts from Jagiellonian University and Warsaw University who are responsible of internal quality assurance system. • 3. The efficacy of higher education (June 2009) • The RHEA conferences since the end of September have huge and wonderful audience: about 500 participants.

8. The next, June 2009 RHEA conference will give the forum for the Polish Universities Accreditation Commission (UKA), unique institution which is composed of pro-rectors representing all Polish universities and which organises evaluation by peer-reviewing that emphasises the educational goal of mutual institutional and individual learning; and that significantly use ‘soft’, qualitative assessment (observation, mutual interviewing, etc.). • The UKA presents one of the ways in which universities democratically assure about quality of education they offer. • However the UKA is the agency and - quoting Harvey - the insiders, not agencies achieve democracy in quality assurance. But the UKA - by its influence and organisational role - may fruitfully support and help to train democratic quality assurance. • RHEA - as perhaps influential concept - could do more. It evokes democracy, it is democracy in practice which stabilise university in its meaning of a bastion of democracy where • a public pedagogy is produced in a range of sites and public spheres [Giroux, 2008].

9. Thank you!