The Role of Quality Assurance and the Values of Higher Education

Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and social responsibility are built into the fabric of what quality assurance does and its vision of quality. Leaders in quality assurance are clear and emphatic. We cannot have quality education without academic freedom. We cannot have quality universities without institutional autonomy. We cannot sustain the quality of our value to students and society without full awareness and commitment to social responsibility. We have built both internal and external quality review on this edifice of values.

Academic freedom, especially in the current environment of trending populism and authoritarianism as well as the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic, is particularly threatened as a core value of both higher education and quality assurance. Yet, quality assurance bodies around the world have stood firm in their contention that it is not feasible to sustain a quality higher education institution in which academic freedom is absent. Quality assurance, in its role as a validator of the importance of higher education institutions, is central to affirming the urgency of assuring a university environment that is grounded in freedom of inquiry and freedom of intellectual engagement, the hallmarks of academic freedom. Quality assurance is there to affirm that universities sustain an environment of free expression, have the resources needed to bring together academics to exercise this freedom and to assure a campus climate that encourages this freedom.

Similarly, to speak of a “quality higher education institution” without autonomy is a contradiction. Quality assurance itself provides both an incentive and leadership for maintaining and assuring this autonomy. It is there to affirm that the conditions for such autonomy prevail, both that governance arrangements are grounded in autonomy and that universities fully exercise the needed academic leadership that is the central justification for this autonomy.

Quality assurance also provides evidence that universities can responsibly sustain this autonomy over time. Sustained autonomy is indispensable in assuring that commitment to this academic leadership and direction is embedded in the life of an institution. As the current pandemic has clearly demonstrated, institutional autonomy, combined with academic freedom, created the environment in which higher education sustained much-needed leadership in thought and action, as researchers, scientists and other intellectuals responded quickly and effectively to provide direction, essential data and information as well as the creative thinking fundamental to addressing the current crisis.

Social responsibility as a value has been identified as particularly important for universities during the last several years, in many ways a restatement and expansion of the “community service” mission of higher education which is common throughout the world. It accompanies teaching and learning as well as research. Quality assurance is grounding more and more of its work in consideration of social responsibility by focusing attention especially on issues of access, equity, diversity, inclusion and inequality. Universities are increasingly examined for the extent of this commitment and success in carrying out this vital work.