Quality assurance dysfunctions

Abstract

This article presents findings from a longitudinal case study of academic audit as enacted at a typical New Zealand university between 1994 and 2019. Academic audit is a higher education quality assurance methodology applied to New Zealand universities. The longitudinal study yielded findings that could not have been detected in a single, five-year audit cycle, in particular, that very similar recommendations were given more than once. Three sets of recurrent recommendations were studied in detail: closing the student feedback loop; monitoring PhD students’ progress and ‘quality assurance infrastructure and leadership’. The issues emerging from these three topics are ‘audit dysfunctions’, some of which are attributable to the institution and some of which belong to the external quality assurance agency. The audit dysfunctions are intended as a heuristic for improving the rigour and effectiveness of higher education quality assurance.

Keywords:

• Academic audit
• dysfunction
• external quality assurance agency
• implementation
• quality assurance
• quality dimensions

Acknowledgements

The cooperation of the case study institution is gratefully recorded, as is the participation of the interviewees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Course outlines, also known as syllabi, are a summary (available online) of the most important information about a course, including title, indication of content, learning objectives, dates, fees, assessment, textbooks, reading list and other information useful for students