Quality Assessment of University Students

Quality assessment in higher education is of global interest; government and public demand for accountability from higher education institutions has steadily increased over the past decade (Brennan, Fedrowitz, Huber, & Shah, 1999). Given this demand, the need for ensuring the validity and utility of the assessment process has also increased. One issue of validity is whether the assessment responds to its audience, those who have mandated the assessment as well as those who will be affected by it. To be useful, the assessment must meet the needs of the people whom it is intended to benefit and aid the evaluated institution to make improvements. Quality assessment is frequently undertaken in response to external authorities who expect clear, ratified criteria to be used in the accountability process. If the assessment is to be beneficial, however, change must be effected within the institution. This means that administrators, faculty members, and students also need an understanding of the criteria that can guid e and facilitate improvements in the way they function. Thus, to be both valid and useful, the approach taken to assessment must be aligned or consistent with the goals of the institution; assessment results must be credible and incorporable. The criteria on which an assessment is based must fit the institution's goals and priorities as well as being understood by the larger community. Indicators of student quality have been used regularly as measures in the evaluation of postsecondary institutions. However, because different types of stakeholders in higher education--the public, administration, faculty, or students--have their own perspectives and goals, they assign different values to criteria of quality. The public wants students to graduate with general abilities and emphasizes criteria such as communication skills (Cave & Hanney, 1992). University administrators are expected to show that resources are being used efficiently and effectively; for them, student completion of program requirements is an important criterion (Nadeau, Donald, & Konrad, 1992). Faculty view the primary obligation of the university to students to be the development of intellectual independence (Baird, 1988; Barzun, 1993) and hence focus on criteria such as the ability to think critically (Barnett, 1988; Trice & Dey, 1997). Students, meanwhile, are increasingly preoccupied with career concerns; they value criteri a such as the ability to get a job (Dey, Astin, & Korn, 1991). To come to an understanding of higher education goals and criteria for judging success in meeting them requires an analysis of the value attached to them by different stakeholders. The issue of aligning the approach taken to assessment with the goals of the institution is equally complex. The most common approaches to quality assessment are based on reputation and resources (Astin, 1985). Reputation is a global assessment of the perceived status or excellence of an institution or program, typically measured by asking knowledgeable experts to rate the institution or program. For example, presidents of research universities might rate other research universities for excellence (Cave & Hanney, 1992). The institutions or programs are then ranked according to their averaged ratings. The resource approach to quality uses input measures of faculty and student quality and physical and fiscal resources (endowments, per-student expenditures). Within the resource approach, one of the most frequently used measures of quality is the academic ability of students at entry to college or university. A third approach uses performance indicators or global outputs to define quality--indices such as progra m or degree completion rates, the proportion of undergraduates admitted to graduate education, or alumni satisfaction ratings. The flaw in these approaches is that they do not suggest how improvements in quality could be made. Arguing that these approaches to quality are counterproductive, Astin (1985) recommended that quality be considered in terms of talent development. …