The Legitimacy of Quality Assurance in Higher Education is a collection of papers published by the Council of Europe. Although a European publication, there are useful nuggets about education quality that can be applied to Canada.

The preface makes note of an era of rapid change in education. Education has seemingly become a “product” to be “consumed” by a “consumer.” This has led to a competitive “capitalistic climate” and fierce competition from emergent economies. Education is a “rare purchase,” but an important life-changing one.

The content here is set against the backdrop of the Bologna Process and the creation of the European Higher Education Area. Much ado has been made of the academic credit transfer process. This study spends some time comparing approaches and the rationale behind different quality assurance standards. Can they really be made compat­ible throughout the European Union? Time will tell. The question for us may be, could any of this work in Canada?

Luc Weber, as editor and author of the first paper, highlights out some of the problems with the issue of quality assurance. He writes “the quality of an education is largely determined by the individual’s learning capacity, and appears in what he or she does with it in the early years of a subsequent career.” If that is the case, can any survey of existing students serve as a quality measure?

All too often Ontario colleges tout the percentage of graduates who gained employment after graduation as a measure of success. Ideally, (and Weber raises this) would it not make more sense to examine the quality of the jobs?

He cautions that devised systems can hamper rather than further the development of good quality. Weber rules out accreditation as a means of quality assurance. Overall in Europe, he states, it does not work. Only a small minority of institutions fail to be accredited, forced assessments have little effect, and the conclusions are not acted upon. The cost-benefit ratio is not effective when based on self-assessments by the institution and inspection by experts.

In the second paper, Alberto Amaral examines the roles and responsibilities of public authorities and institutions. Of more importance to us as faculty, he summarizes what has happened to faculty as the academy loses political autonomy. Faculty become more like other workers, dropping from the professional ranks to “mere employee” status. During the transformation of education into a “product,” faculty have become just another input into the production of that “product.”

Amaral notes that “higher education institutions are increasingly using micromanagement mechanisms in order to respond to outside (state) pressures.”

One of those pressures is fiscal, something we know all too well in Ontario. In the Ontario college system, we have a novel workload measurement formula and monitoring mechanism for full-time faculty in our collective agreement. Recognition is given for time spent on preparation, evaluation/feed­back, and “complementary functions” relating to the professional responsibilities of the teacher.

The impact of outside fiscal pressure is that complementary functions that do not contribute directly to the bottom line, but can contribute to quality for students, are eliminated.

Where do faculty fit in? Peter Williams in his paper on the European Higher Education Area comments on quality assurance: “The concept has too frequently been presented simply as a form of burdensome external inspection, perceived by higher education as undermining its academic freedom in the name of consumer protection, or demanding compliance as a way of guaranteeing ultimate public control of universities, and a tradeoff for increased notional autonomy.

“But there is another version of quality assurance, one which places at its centre the professionalization of teaching and the conscious organization of learning, which emphasizes the need for careful effort to make sure that students are offered the best opportunities possible to achieve their full potential as learners. This version of quality assurance focuses on student and teacher…”

The papers included attempt to answer the questions posed in the preface but I’m not sure they hit the mark. I’m not positive the reader is any more convinced as to the legitimacy of quality assurance.

I couldn’t help but compare this study to the CAUT series title Counting Out the Scholars (Bruneau and Savage, 2002). The true inspiration in that book hits the reader at page 224 in the section “Driving Concepts for a New Accountability.” The ideas outlined there in the categories of openness, practical accountability, and quality constitute an invaluable roadmap for the way forward.

Likewise, The Legitimacy of Quality Assurance does offer insightful conclusions and recommendations: “The development and maintenance of good-quality higher education and research are contingent on attractive working conditions for staff and students as well as on the framework laid down by public authorities.” This is too often ignored. Faculty work environments that are not ergono­mically beneficial, do not offer suitable working space, or do not offer suitable student meeting space may sound minor to some but they do impact quality. When faculty are not given sufficient time to support students, students suffer. Faculty working conditions are students’ learning conditions.

Another good point made in this work: “The resources and efforts spent on external quality assurance should be commensurate with the benefits derived from it and should be no more than necessary to achieve these benefits.” Rather than look outside, the institution would be best to spend the money where possible to improve the contact between teacher and student.

And another: “Since … the main responsibility for quality development and quality assurance in higher education rests with the institutions, higher education governance and management must have the continuous development of quality as one of its main goals.”

It feels as though post-secondary institutions are too concerned with developing schemes to attract and retain students that translate into bottom line dollars. If quality were an inherent feature of programs, students would be on you doorstep, have a better chance of success and would be willing to stay.

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Darryl Bedford is president of OPSEU Local 110 and a professor in the school of information technology at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.