Since the late 1970’s the Australian Government has encouraged universities to critically monitor their own performance. Throughout the 1980’s this focus has been sharpened to include the improvement of efficiency and effectiveness, and an increased awareness of public accountability.
The Commonwealth funded major discipline reviews during the mid 1980’s to determine standards and to improve quality and efficiency in universities. While the reviews revealed the importance of quality assurance within institutions and across the sector, there was no way to ensure that institutions acted upon review recommendations.
The Commonwealth was concerned to maintain and further enhance the quality of Australian higher education during a time of large-scale structural reorganisation in the late 1980’s and rapid growth in higher education participation from the early 1990’s.
In 1991 the Commonwealth moved from the discipline review approach to a whole of institution approach to quality assurance. It announced a comprehensive set of measures to enhance the quality of higher education teaching and research. Those universities able to demonstrate a high level of quality assurance in the context of their missions and goals were provided with extra funding.
The Commonwealth established the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education in 1992 to:
- provide advice on quality assurance issues;
- conduct independent audits of institutional quality assurance policies and procedures and;
- make recommendations about the allocation of annual quality-related funds.
The Committee conducted three rounds of independent whole of institution audits from 1993 to 1995. The voluntary self-assessment undertaken by institutions under this programme triggered considerable change at the institutional level as gaps were identified and outcomes measured.
Since 1998, all triennially funded institutions have been required to submit an Institutional Quality Assurance and Improvement Plan to the Commonwealth as part of the educational profiles process. This annual process includes institutions providing a number of documents and plans to the Commonwealth and visits to universities may be arranged, in some cases, to obtain further information.
The plans outline the university’s goals and aims in the key areas of teaching and learning, research, management and community service. Each institution is required to provide detail of the strategies that have been adopted to achieve their goals and the performance indicators used to assess their success.
The plans are expected to include the outcomes data from two national surveys; the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) that assess graduate perceptions of the teaching they received at university and the Graduate Destination Survey (GDS) that assesses the employment success of recent graduates.
The plans have enabled the Commonwealth to report to the wider community on the quality and quality assurance processes of Australian universities. More importantly they are a means of public accountability in the area of quality assurance for Australia’s publicly funded universities, and enable students to make more informed choices about the institution that best suits their particular needs.
In March 2000 the Ministerial Council on Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) endorsed two new initiatives to enhance and strengthen the quality assurance framework for higher education in Australia:
An independent audit body, the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA); and
The National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes.
For more information about the recent history of Australia’s quality assurance framework, refer to the following publications:
Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Repositioning Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Australian Higher Education, Evaluations and Investigations Programme, Canberra, 2000;and
Anderson, D. et al, Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Australian Higher Education, Evaluations and Investigations Programme, DETYA, Canberra, 2000;