University autonomy essential
Jun 11, 2005
THE two most often used definitions of quality are ‘fitness for purpose,’ and ‘continuous improvement or enhancement’. It is these definitions that are adopted in this discussion.
Prof. Kazenga Tibenderana
THE two most often used definitions of quality are ‘fitness for purpose,’ and ‘continuous improvement or enhancement’. It is these definitions that are adopted in this discussion.
Emphasis on quality assurance, defined as ‘systematic, structured and continuous attention to quality in terms of quality maintenance and improvement’, has led to the development of both internal, institutional mechanisms and to the establishment of national bodies, such as the National Council for Higher Education, to monitor institutional processes and performance. It also reflects what has been seen as the challenge to Government of finding the balance between centrally controlled quality assurance and devolved responsibilities.
The quality assurance system may hinder the flexibility that policy makers seek. The culture of any institution can be affected by the approach taken to quality assurance.
The approach taken by the Council and the manner in which it interfaces with universities may change the current institutional culture.
The direction of this change may not be welcomed by the institutions, nor supportive of other government higher education targets. The Council should, therefore, be a board of experts not bound by ministerial instructions and not directly subject to political influence. The policy of quality assurance depends on its ability to act independently and intelligently and to treat other stakeholders as equal partners.
However, events since its inception in 2001/2002 seem to suggest that it has not done so. Recent exchanges in the press between the proprietor of Kampala International University (KIU), Hassan Basajjabalaba and Dr Kasozi, while appearing before the Parliamentary Social Services Committee, is evidence that todate the council has dealt with private universities in a high-handed manner. The initial position taken by the council in its consultations with these universities has been relatively contentious and aggressive.
Universities have no option, but to make strategic choices based on systems maintenance — staying in business — which will undoubtedly affect their ideological and pedagogic considerations. It seems likely the ever increasing flexibility will prove to be the most effective tactic to implement that strategy and the undoubted benefits from flexibility, such as flexible structures, supporting modular courses, nesting qualifications, and multiple pathways to graduation, will continue to accrue.
Often associated with these are flexible scheduling of teaching in the evenings, and flexible modes of delivery. Other elements of flexibility include: flexibility of assessment, curriculum, and employment of academic staff, permitting more part-time and contract work.
University courses should offer new combinations of subjects and should be geared towards new employment areas if their graduates are to be well received in the labour market.
It is acknowledged that flexibility has been instrumental in achieving many desirable ends, related to both issues of wider equity and access and to efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
It has been an efficient tool in the expansion of university education.
Changes in curriculum, mode of delivery and assessment procedures have attracted more part-time and mature students.
There is no doubt that in embracing flexibility, universities have responded positively to the opportunities offered by social, economic and technological changes, to the benefit of students, the institutions and the wider economy. Flexibility has facilitated making universities more economically sound businesses and institutions of greater equality of opportunities.
It would be a tragedy, for Ugandan education as a whole, if these benefits were to be wrapped up by centralisation and detailed regulation for quality assurance.
therefore, neither the Ministry of Education nor the council should be empowered to prescribe curricula for universities, or require them to be similar or to set up joint university examinations or even to have a final say on the student tuition fees. Thus, it is with pleasure that I applaud the decision of the members of the Parliamentary Social Services Committee (The New Vision, May 28) to oppose the Ministry of Education’s capricious proposals to amend the 2001 Universities Act to give itself unimpaired powers over the running of both public and private universities.
The weightiest argument against similar curricula for universities; joint university examinations and similar student tuition fees, is that the need to find a consensus on every issue is bound to lead to immobility and low adaptability; the high degree of centralisation diminishes the influence of those most concerned — lecturers — the compromised nature of most decisions means hardly anybody could endorse them.
Moreover, standardisation in the university system, whether in curricula, or examinations, or student tuition fees, will inevitably stifle innovation and the drive to excel, particularly among private universities, that aspire to lofty heights thus creating an education that will not meet all the demands of students and society.
The council should have no powers over funding decisions. It should be up to the provider of the course to ensure that the necessary funding was available. The government can establish a funding scheme for recurrent costs on a student per capita; other funding and capital provision are found by the provider from private and other sources.
However, the council must ensure that students have value for money. In pursuance of its duties as a quality assurance agency, the council could insist on external examining for all degree courses and to demand access to external examiners’ reports.
University examinations are highly susceptible to exam malpractice, which calls for the watchful eye of the council to ensure some universities do not award bogus degree certificates.
But the development of quality assurance system will depend on the development of self-confident and pro-active academic staff.
One advantage that would flow from a determination among academics to formulate problems, propose solutions to them and seek to implement and test the solutions, would be that academics themselves might come to feel less victims and more like masters of their profession and circumstance.
The challenge now is how to encourage academics to own quality assurance processes, both from the point of view of meeting the Council’s requirements and being sensitive to the student as a customer. If the Council supports self-improvement, it seems likely that an enterprise culture, supportive of individuals, might be more appropriate than a top-down corporation approach.
If, on the other hand, the Council focus is based on compliance, then the universities are more likely to respond by reinforcing bureaucratic procedures and pulling back from any tendency to decentralise.
This would reinforce a corporation culture and delay progress towards an enterprise culture in which all staff recognise and respond to the changing environment, in which the concept of student as client, stakeholder involvement, increased accountability, and quality assurance procedures are all a part.
It is on finding an appropriate balance between accountability and enhancement, between external and internal accountability and between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators that success in quality assurance will, at least in part depend, and not on centralisation and detailed regulation.
Rather, centralisation and detailed regulation in universities will signal the government’s lack of trust in the professional judgement of academics and lead to plummeting morale with incalculable consequences.
The writer is a professor of History and an enthusiast for African
education and development
THE two most often used definitions of quality are ‘fitness for purpose,’ and ‘continuous improvement or enhancement’. It is these definitions that are adopted in this discussion.
Emphasis on quality assurance, defined as ‘systematic, structured and continuous attention to quality in terms of quality maintenance and improvement’, has led to the development of both internal, institutional mechanisms and to the establishment of national bodies, such as the National Council for Higher Education, to monitor institutional processes and performance. It also reflects what has been seen as the challenge to Government of finding the balance between centrally controlled quality assurance and devolved responsibilities.
The quality assurance system may hinder the flexibility that policy makers seek. The culture of any institution can be affected by the approach taken to quality assurance.
The approach taken by the Council and the manner in which it interfaces with universities may change the current institutional culture.
The direction of this change may not be welcomed by the institutions, nor supportive of other government higher education targets. The Council should, therefore, be a board of experts not bound by ministerial instructions and not directly subject to political influence. The policy of quality assurance depends on its ability to act independently and intelligently and to treat other stakeholders as equal partners.
However, events since its inception in 2001/2002 seem to suggest that it has not done so. Recent exchanges in the press between the proprietor of Kampala International University (KIU), Hassan Basajjabalaba and Dr Kasozi, while appearing before the Parliamentary Social Services Committee, is evidence that todate the council has dealt with private universities in a high-handed manner. The initial position taken by the council in its consultations with these universities has been relatively contentious and aggressive.
Universities have no option, but to make strategic choices based on systems maintenance — staying in business — which will undoubtedly affect their ideological and pedagogic considerations. It seems likely the ever increasing flexibility will prove to be the most effective tactic to implement that strategy and the undoubted benefits from flexibility, such as flexible structures, supporting modular courses, nesting qualifications, and multiple pathways to graduation, will continue to accrue.
Often associated with these are flexible scheduling of teaching in the evenings, and flexible modes of delivery. Other elements of flexibility include: flexibility of assessment, curriculum, and employment of academic staff, permitting more part-time and contract work.
University courses should offer new combinations of subjects and should be geared towards new employment areas if their graduates are to be well received in the labour market.
It is acknowledged that flexibility has been instrumental in achieving many desirable ends, related to both issues of wider equity and access and to efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
It has been an efficient tool in the expansion of university education.
Changes in curriculum, mode of delivery and assessment procedures have attracted more part-time and mature students.
There is no doubt that in embracing flexibility, universities have responded positively to the opportunities offered by social, economic and technological changes, to the benefit of students, the institutions and the wider economy. Flexibility has facilitated making universities more economically sound businesses and institutions of greater equality of opportunities.
It would be a tragedy, for Ugandan education as a whole, if these benefits were to be wrapped up by centralisation and detailed regulation for quality assurance.
therefore, neither the Ministry of Education nor the council should be empowered to prescribe curricula for universities, or require them to be similar or to set up joint university examinations or even to have a final say on the student tuition fees. Thus, it is with pleasure that I applaud the decision of the members of the Parliamentary Social Services Committee (The New Vision, May 28) to oppose the Ministry of Education’s capricious proposals to amend the 2001 Universities Act to give itself unimpaired powers over the running of both public and private universities.
The weightiest argument against similar curricula for universities; joint university examinations and similar student tuition fees, is that the need to find a consensus on every issue is bound to lead to immobility and low adaptability; the high degree of centralisation diminishes the influence of those most concerned — lecturers — the compromised nature of most decisions means hardly anybody could endorse them.
Moreover, standardisation in the university system, whether in curricula, or examinations, or student tuition fees, will inevitably stifle innovation and the drive to excel, particularly among private universities, that aspire to lofty heights thus creating an education that will not meet all the demands of students and society.
The council should have no powers over funding decisions. It should be up to the provider of the course to ensure that the necessary funding was available. The government can establish a funding scheme for recurrent costs on a student per capita; other funding and capital provision are found by the provider from private and other sources.
However, the council must ensure that students have value for money. In pursuance of its duties as a quality assurance agency, the council could insist on external examining for all degree courses and to demand access to external examiners’ reports.
University examinations are highly susceptible to exam malpractice, which calls for the watchful eye of the council to ensure some universities do not award bogus degree certificates.
But the development of quality assurance system will depend on the development of self-confident and pro-active academic staff.
One advantage that would flow from a determination among academics to formulate problems, propose solutions to them and seek to implement and test the solutions, would be that academics themselves might come to feel less victims and more like masters of their profession and circumstance.
The challenge now is how to encourage academics to own quality assurance processes, both from the point of view of meeting the Council’s requirements and being sensitive to the student as a customer. If the Council supports self-improvement, it seems likely that an enterprise culture, supportive of individuals, might be more appropriate than a top-down corporation approach.
If, on the other hand, the Council focus is based on compliance, then the universities are more likely to respond by reinforcing bureaucratic procedures and pulling back from any tendency to decentralise.
This would reinforce a corporation culture and delay progress towards an enterprise culture in which all staff recognise and respond to the changing environment, in which the concept of student as client, stakeholder involvement, increased accountability, and quality assurance procedures are all a part.
It is on finding an appropriate balance between accountability and enhancement, between external and internal accountability and between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators that success in quality assurance will, at least in part depend, and not on centralisation and detailed regulation.
Rather, centralisation and detailed regulation in universities will signal the government’s lack of trust in the professional judgement of academics and lead to plummeting morale with incalculable consequences.
The writer is a professor of History and an enthusiast for African
education and development