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Quality Assurance and Academic Development as Interventions to Improve Student Success: Why are we not More Successful?

Presenter

Prof Narend Baijnath has been the CEO of the Council on Higher Education since October 2015. Before joining the CHE, he was Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of South Africa. Prior to that he occupied the positions of VP: Strategy, Planning and Partnerships and VP: Research and Planning at the same institution. 

Narend holds a Master’s Degree from Durham University, and a Doctorate from the University of the Western Cape. He taught at the universities of Cape Town and Western Cape and was Director: Academic Planning at UWC before joining Technikon SA in 1998 as Dean of Community Sciences. After serving his term in the latter capacity, he was promoted to Deputy Vice Chancellor: Planning and Development. In July 2012 he was nominated as the South African representative on the Commonwealth of Learning Board (CoL) by the Minister of Higher Education and Training. He has served on the CoL EXCO and as Audit Committee Chair. He was recently elected  Chair of the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth of Learning. He is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. In 2008 he was appointed a Fellow at St Edmunds College, Cambridge University and simultaneously a research professor at the Open University United Kingdom (OUUK).

Abstract

Quality Assurance has been an instrument of change in higher education in the democratic era going back at least to the Education White Paper 3 of 1997, which set out a policy agenda for the transformation of higher education. The legislative framework which enabled the implementation of the policy was the Higher Education Act of 1997, as amended several times over the years. The Council on Higher Education (CHE) was established through the Higher Education Act; as such the CHE is referred to as a “creature of statute”. Quality assurance was identified in the White Paper as one of the key levers of transformation; the others being planning and funding. Shortly after the publication of the White Paper and the promulgation of the Higher Education Act, earnest attention was given to creating a quality assurance regime in line with the policy aspirations and intentions of the White Paper, and the regulatory purposes of the Higher Education Act.

 Since the establishment of the CHE, and its Sub-Committee responsible for quality assurance - the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) , an ambitious quality assurance system has been put in place, reaching every programme, within and across institutions through accreditation, standards development and review processes. At the institutional level, a cycle of institutional audits was completed between 2004 and 2011.

Following the completion of the first cycle of audits, the HEQC resolved that instead of a new cycle of audits, the focus should be on quality enhancement. Consequently, the Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) was conceptualised and implemented from 2014 until its termination in 2019. An emphasis in the QEP was on student success, for despite the quality assurance endeavours over the past decade, the success rate of especially black students remained stubbornly low, and the dropout rate unacceptably high. This presentation interrogates why the massive effort in quality assurance, while measuring significant progress and success on a wide front,  has not yielded the anticipated dividends with wider participation and increased access. It explores what needs be done further in a reformed quality assurance regime, perhaps with amplified objectives and purposes, and sharper methods and instruments,  to ensure that quality assurance can be turned into a stronger lever of change in higher education, so there are more successful graduates, prepared by universities for the future world of work, and democratic citizenship.

The CHE is currently in the process of revising its entire regime of quality assurance with the above objectives in mind. It is anticipated that the result will be a new framework for quality assurance, with revised, streamlined and more efficient ways of conducting quality assurance. The anticipated approach will make a sharper distinction between institution-led processes of quality assurance (internal quality assurance) supported by the CHE, and CHE led processes of quality assurance led by the CHE (external quality assurance). The current framework under conceptualisation, and due to undergo consultation during July and August will be refined and finalised for implementation following this process. It is anticipated to be less onerous on institutions while being more cost-effective to administer, and hopefully more demonstrably if not measurably impactful on the sector.

A corollary to efforts in quality assurance at sectoral and institutional levels has been a massive effort in academic development throughout the higher education sector. As student demographics have changed to be more representative of the general populace in all its diversity, the challenges that especially black students experience once they have breached the barriers to access, are mostly related to how to succeed in the face of a raft of other obstacles to success. Through an exploration of the factors which promote or impede student success, and the complexities which characterise the higher education system in South Africa, the presentation delves into the inhibitive and enabling conditions for student success with a view to better informing the limits and possibilities of academic development as a factor in student success. I will illuminate what the CHE’s QA endeavours over the past two decades suggest in this regard.

Finally, I will focus on how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted on the higher education sector and explore what the future might be like. It is clear that after a protracted period of remote teaching, learning and assessment, there can (or should be) no return to the past. I will suggest how the changes brought about by the crisis can be leveraged to future proof our universities against future such crises, while also recreating the teaching and learning environment to enhance the chances of student success. 

Presentation & Resources

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