Sharing the burden: the role ofagencies and faculty in developing
and sustaining quality assurance inhigher education

Mr Anthony McClaran
Chief Executive Officer
8 August 2017

Overview
1. The rise of the accountable university
2. Self-regulation versus accountability
3. Regulation versus quality assurance

4. Reducing the ‘burden’
5. Faculty as objects and partners
6. The rise of student-centric quality assurance

1. The rise of the accountable university• “Planning and resource allocation tend to be incremental
rather than dynamic…Among the reasons for this are thestrong forces within each university. These include large
and powerful academic departments together with individual
academics who sometimes see their academic discipline as
more important than the long-term well-being of theuniversity which houses them…
• …in our view universities are
first and foremost corporate
enterprises for which
subsidiary units and individual
academics are responsibleand accountable”.

Report of the Steering Committee for Efficiency Studies in Universities, 1985

2. Self-regulation versus Accountability• “The opportunity which the [Academic Audit] Unit is alreadyoffering universities, by acting as a stimulus for them todefine and defend their own standards and quality, inpromoting self-reflection and self-criticism and…inencouraging a much needed development of a sense ofprofessionalism in university teachers…must not be lost.”
Peter Williams, ‘The UK Academic Audit Unit’, 1991

3. Regulation versus Quality Assurance• “While this report recommends
that the Australian government
should assume full responsibility
for the regulation of higher
education in Australia, it isimportant to retain a strong
element of local knowledge
and responsiveness in any
national regulatory bodyand this should be reflected in its governance andoperational arrangements.”
Review of Australian Higher Education(The Bradley Review), 2008

4. Reducing the ‘burden’• “The approach [to quality assessment] is designed to be
proportionate, risk-based and granted in the context ofeach individual provider…this tailored approach will
significantly reduce the regulatory costs and burden formany providers as it removes the need to prepare for
repeated and routine…cyclical quality reviews against
the baseline requirements.”
Revised operating model for quality assessment, HigherEducation Funding Council for England, March 20165. Faculty as objects and partners• “Regulating as object…theregulator makes a demand
and the regulated complies
with the command.
• Regulating as partner
recognises the expertise,knowledge and commitment of the party being
regulated. The assumption behind regulating as
partner is that those being regulated need to be
motivated to work with the regulator to correcta problem or concern.”
Review of Higher Education Regulation, Professor Kwong Lee
Dow and Professor Valerie Braithwaite, 2013

6. The rise of student-centric QA• The Office for Students (OfS) will be explicitly
pro-competition and pro-student choice, and will makesure that a high quality
higher education
experience is available
for students from allbackgrounds.
• “For the first time, we will
put the interests of thestudent at the heart of
the regulatory landscape. By embedding better
student outcomes, we will also protect the interests oftaxpayers and the economy”.
Success of a knowledge economy, Department for
Business, Innovation and Skills (UK), May 2016

Questions?

Anthony.McClaran@teqsa.gov.au@AnthonyMcClaranwww.teqsa.gov.au@TEQSAGov