The Search for Quality in Higher Education--Accreditation

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Access, Equity and Capacity in Asia Pacific
Higher Education IFE 2020 Leadership Institute
February 23-March 6, 2009 John Hawkins and Deane
Neubauer
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Exploring Capacity

• Common understandings of capacity
• Structural problems with measurement
• Implications for linking capacity with access and
  equity considerations
• The importance of measurement for planning and
  quality assurance
• All these yield the dilemma of measuring
  capacity
• A new capacity paradigm

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Conventional Understandings of Capacity

• Universal law of higher education the more
  capacity an institution has, the better it is.
• More is better!
• The presumption that capacity is a necessary
  precondition of access
• The further presumption that capacity is
  invariably a precondition of quality

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Some Further Dimensions of Capacity

• Measuring capacity not very sensible without
  knowing its purposes
• Capacity is always capacity for something and
  exists within politicized contexts
• For example capacity and access are always
  contested terrain--particular interest groups
  will define access in terms of their specific
  needs.
• E.g. HE administrators define and implicitly
  measure capacity differently than legislators or
  governmental administrators

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Conceptualizing Capacity Measurement

• Understandings of capacity co-vary with
  structural conditions, including demography.
  Under-capacity, Optimal-capacity, and
  Over-capacity
• These in turn yield notions of appropriate
  capacity for a given situation
• For HEIs two results occur (a) what are they
  meant to do in response to such situations (e.g.
  expand, contract, differentiate, change mission)
  and (b) what resource streams are available for
  the determination of direction?

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The Dilemma of Situational Determination

• Because capacity is always situationally
  determined,
• its effective measure is always (literally!) a
  moving target.
• What is acceptable capacity within one set of
  access aspirations will be inadequate in another
• Because of this situational uncertainly, HEIs,
  accreditation and QA bodies tend to develop
  measures of capacity based on inputs
  institutions and governments seek to increase
  quality, achieve access and implement equity by
  managing inputs

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Making Progress on Capacity Understandings

• Ideally we want an understanding of capacity
  which is dynamic
• That is our understanding of effective capacity
  can change with respect to
• The institutional purposes to which it is meant
  to refer, e.g., alignment with access, teaching
  institutions, research institutions,
  undergraduate, graduate, professional education,
  etc.
• And, the functional components of institutions
  within which it is contained, e.g., teaching,
  research, service, administrative efficiency, etc.

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Toward a New Capacity Paradigm

• A new paradigm would combine the sense of a
  dynamic notion of capacity with
• An understanding of the relative, and
  differentiated nature of institutional
  effectiveness
• This was the task the Western Association of
  Schools and Colleges set for itself in developing
  a new model of US accreditation in 2000.

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The Paradigmatic Breakthrough

• From inputs to a linkage between inputs and
  outputs
• The idea of core commitments institutional
  capacity and an institutions concept of
  educational effectiveness
• Central focus on quality
• From stipulation to inquiry

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Variations on Equity and Access in Asian HE

• Background
• Assumption nations developmore access to HE
• Post WWII optimistic vision increased access to
  HE meant reduction in inequalities
• 1970s cynicism sets in gap between rich and
  poor continued to increase
• Failure to account for internal and external
  structural contradictions

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TYPES OF EQUITY Equality

• EQUALITY OF ACCESS
• EQUALITY OF SURVIVAL
• EQUALITY OF OUTPUT
• EQUALITY OF OUTCOME

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Income Related Equity

• INCOME DISTRIBUTION AND EQUALITY
• CAPABILITY POVERTY
• FINANCIAL BURDENS ON POOR FEES AND HOUSEHOLD
  EXPENDITURES

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Region Related Equity

• REGIONAL URBAN-RURAL DISPARITIES
• REGIONAL DISPARITY WITHIN COUNTRIES
• REASONS FOR REGIONAL DISPARITIES
• URBAN POVERTY

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Socio-Cultural Related Equity

• ACCESS AND EQUITY IN EDUCATION FOR ETHNIC
  MINORITIES
• FOR LINGUISTIC GROUPS
• FOR RELIGIOUS GROUPS
• FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE
• OVERALL ISSUE OF DISPARATE VALUES, BELIEFS, AND
  AWARENESS
• CASTE

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Structural Responses

• Tracking mechanisms
• Public-private debate, Neoliberalism as policy
• Shadow educational systems one outcome juku,
  buxiban, hakwon

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Some Regional Cases Cost Issues

• Who pays, how much, mechanisms for financing HE?
• Cost-sharing now present in most systems
• But in a context of financial austerity,
  declining faculty morale, student unrest

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SUMMARY

• Low Cost State Subsidized Singapore, Indonesia,
  Vietnam
• High Cost Low State Support Korea, Philippines
• Mid-range Cost Some State Support Taiwan,
  Japan, China
• Region-wide growing tuition, rising costs
  privatization yet, cost-sharing schemes by State

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Responses

• Development
• Philanthropy
• Alumni development
• Private sector partnerships
• More transparency for families and students
• Will the access gap widen or narrow?