A major goal of the manufacturing industry is increasing product quality. The quality of a product is strongly associated with the condition of the cutting tool that produced it. Catching poor tool conditions early in the production will help reduce defects. However, with current CNC technology, manufacturers still rely mainly on the operator's…

For more than five years the Houston Public Library has collected statistics for measuring networked collections and services based on emerging guidelines. While the guidelines have provided authority and stability to the process, the clarification process continues. The development of information discovery software, such as federated search tools…

There has been considerable interest in national quality assurance process in Turkey following the pilot accreditation project of the Engineering College of the Middle East Technical University (METU) by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), in 2000. ABET accreditation of the Engineering Colleges of Bosphorus and Bilkent…

Purpose: This article seeks to highlight the challenges and issues that face merging higher education institutions and also to outline some of the challenges in integrating the quality assurance systems during the pre-, interim and post-merger phases in a merged university. Design/methodology/approach: Case studies of merged and merging…

NAEYC asks members and other stakeholders in quality early childhood education to share their thinking with the Commission on NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria on a number of questions concerning NAEYC's future accreditation system.

Water quality is a critical environmental, social, and political issue in Delaware. In the late 1990s, a series of events related to water quality issues led to the passage of a state nutrient management law. This new law required nutrient management planning and established a state certification program for nutrient users in the agricultural and…

This article focuses on methods of funding allocation and quality assurance as prominent levers of change in higher education reform today. It is their interplay which forms the main components of coordination frameworks. The arguments for more market or new forms of state intervention can only be understood in the context of such a framework.…

This document supplements the advice given in "How good is our school?" (HGIOS)--third edition and "The Child at the Centre"--second edition which set out comprehensive quality frameworks and provide helpful advice on the process of improvement through self-evaluation. In particular, this document provides advice on the…

This document represents an innovative and radical landmark in the development of external quality arrangements for Scotland's colleges. The quality framework and arrangements for annual engagement, subject-based aspect reports, and external review reflect new thinking nationally, within HMIE, in the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding…

Board members are accustomed to looking after the financial health of their institutions by reviewing budgets, revenue projections, capital needs, or the approval of specific expenditures. At many institutions the board only rarely gets to look directly at the heart of the academic enterprise: the quality of teaching and learning. However, growing…

This monograph describes program models as having a program quality support component and three chronological program components: entrance into a program, participation in a program, and re-engagement in learning. The four components that make up a program model are defined by principles. A principle describes a guiding assumption about how to…

The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) has served as a voice for quality assurance and promulgation of standards in higher education for over 25 years. CAS was established to promote inter-association efforts to address quality assurance, student learning, and professional integrity. CAS includes membership of over…

The main argument in Loyiso Jita's article is that although both law and convention have established stakeholder participation in higher education quality assurance, it lacks conceptual clarity. The article bravely attempts to develop a theory of "stakeholder identification and salience" by drawing mainly on business and organisational…

This article is a critical overview of the symposium on the contribution of the quality assurance process to democracy recently held at the University of Stellenbosch. It argues that recent symposia and colloquia in which South Africans themselves have attempted to stake out their intellectual credentials are extremely important and that the…

Purpose: This paper seeks to model and compute productivity, including a measure of quality, of a service which does not have marketable outputs--namely public education at the micro level. This application is a case study for Sweden public schools. Design/methodology/approach: A Malmquist productivity index is employed which allows for multiple…