Education institutions worldwide have and continue to seek opportunities to spread their offerings abroad. While the provision of courses to students located overseas through partner institutions has many advantages, it raises questions about quality control that are not as applicable to other forms of international education. This paper uses a…

Research Findings: Hong Kong launched the new mechanism of the Quality Assurance Inspection (QAI) in 2000 to enforce accountability and school improvement in the sector of early childhood education. The QAI comprises 3 stages: school self-evaluation, external inspection, and release of the QAI report to the public. To understand the roles of…

The purpose of the study is to identify the patterns of change in higher education institutions. It examines the contexts of the changing quality assurance mechanisms used by the different types of higher education institutions in England, Japan, and New York State between 2001 and 2007. The paper argues that there were no clear patterns of…

Across the broad spectrum of disciplines and departments within higher education, it sometimes feels like there is little that unites them. They talk about silos, they bemoan divergent and fragmented efforts, and they refer frequently to "them" and "they," regardless of where they are on the organizational chart. However, there is one topic that…

A Chinese translation of the Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS), a quantitative instrument employed mainly in Western higher education contexts for collecting students' feedback on their learning patterns (in the form of students' processing strategies, regulation strategies, learning orientations and conceptions of learning), was adapted and…

Assuring the quality of transnational education has been an endeavour of increasing importance in the internationalisation of higher education but is also increasingly challenging given the involvement of many stakeholders. This paper focuses on the experiences of and challenges faced by private tertiary education providers in Malaysia and…

The question of the manner in which universities have organised themselves to embed the "quality" agenda in Scotland is addressed in this paper by considering whether the seemingly different structures generated are in fact sophisticated and efficient forms of resource allocation, or organic and emergent structures with only local…

The intensive process observed in the past few years, in which higher professional education is coming to be included in the system of market relations, is setting new target guidelines of the activity of institutions of higher learning, as well as the management models of educational institutions. The marketing component is becoming more and more…

This paper gives an overview of the Indian technical education system with regard to both its quantitative and qualitative scenario and upholds the value of accreditation in quality improvement and quality assurance of educational programmes. The paper presents a comparison of accreditation systems being followed in some important countries,…

Dual enrollment is one means of facilitating increased degree productivity, which can lead to the more educated workforce needed in today's society. This qualitative study was designed to obtain student perceptions about their dual enrollment experience, including how it impacted their decision to go to college and what comparisons they would make…

Accreditation can be seen as one of several complementary measures in a quality assurance system, and the starting point is the need to maintain and improve good quality in institutions of higher education. Accreditation can play a more or less dominant role in the field of different measures that aim at monitoring, steering, recognizing and…

As a key performance indicator in university quality assurance processes, the retention of students in their studies is an issue of concern world-wide. Implicit in the process of quality assurance is quality improvement. In this article, we examine student retention from a teaching and learning perspective, in terms of teaching and learning…

In this paper, I report on the work of a practitioner inquiry group that went awry when the sponsor refused to publish and disseminate the participants' final reports, stating that they were of poor quality and did not contribute to the knowledge base. I, the facilitator of the group, disagreed strongly with her. I suggest that the difference…

External music examiners play a significant role in assessing, verifying and maintaining musical standards. Educational output endorsed by external examiners serves to verify, modify and legitimise internal behaviour. This article examines some of the "inside practices" of external music examiners in the context of quality assurance. It…

In contrast to the long-standing history of assessment in secular higher education, religious institutions have not been at the cutting edge of assessment, evaluation, and research. However, external pressures on institutions have led to a self-examined life, use of reliable indicators of institutional performance, and development of comprehensive…