Editorial

Citation

Dalrymple, J. (2012), "Editorial", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 20 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/qae.2012.12020baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Quality Assurance in Education, Volume 20, Issue 2

The effects of the Global Financial Crisis continue to reverberate around the world. In the cases of Greece and Italy, profound changes have taken place that have replaced democratically elected governments with technocrats who have been charged with the responsibility of dealing with the internal national financial crises in those countries. The concerns affecting many nations in the world relate to the question of whether there shall be default by an important Euro-zone nation, and, if that happens, what international consequences are likely to flow from such an event.

Following the Bologna Declaration of 1999, the member states of the European Union embarked on the establishment of a European Higher Education Area and it was recognised that the implementation of the Bologna Process would be a substantial undertaking and that it would take time, political will and significant resources to bring about the changes envisaged. Major pillars of the reform process were the European Standards and Guidelines for quality assurance in higher education and a mechanism to ensure the deployment of the standards and guidelines through the compilation of a register of quality assurance agencies. These pillars, together with an overarching qualifications framework that enabled the European Higher Education Area to function were planned for completion in 2010. However, the deadline for completion of qualifications frameworks was delayed until 2012.

Consequently, the European Higher Education Area is in the process of development at a time when the fiscal and political environments in a number of member countries are probably more stressed than they have been for many decades. In such a context, it is essential that the importance of quality management in institutions and quality assurance of the teaching and learning activities are promoted and embraced. The development of the European Higher Education Area is a significant step towards mutual recognition of academic qualifications across jurisdictional borders and it is a potential template for much broader recognition processes that will facilitate much greater mobility of the professional workforce as future phases of globalisation unfold.

The first paper in this issue by Marta Barandiaran-Galdós, Miren Barenetxea Ayesta, Antonio Cardona-Rodriguez, Juan José Mijangos Del Campo and Jon Olaskoaga-Larrauri provides us with an insight into the views that teaching staff have about quality in the educational environment from the perspective of staff in a Spanish university. The authors used a survey to collect the opinions of teaching staff from a broad range of disciplines in Spanish public universities. Most respondents were experienced full time staff who are currently engaged in teaching undergraduate students. The authors found a certain lack of alignment between the espoused policies of universities and the opinions of staff that is likely to impede the achievement of the goals of some important stakeholders of university education. In particular, the staff view indicates that students entering higher education need to be better prepared for the demands of education at the university level.

The second paper in this issue by Anna Saiti provides insights into the Greek school education system, indicating that the centralised approach to school education provision has led to the assurance of quality in the school system being exercised through school leadership, school funding provision and the transfer of teachers between schools. The author discusses the various arguments for and against a very centralised approach to funding, concluding that an appropriate balance must be found to facilitate equal opportunities in school education. The author then provides some insights into teacher mobility indicating that most teachers remain in the same school for less than four years, a measure that would indicate some instability in the teaching staff in schools, not usually associated with quality in education. The role of leadership in schools and the need for leadership education and training for school leaders is discussed.

The third paper in the issue is by Vangelis Kotsifos, Athanasios Alegakis and Anastas Philalithis also looks at an aspect of the Greek education system, in this case, at the Masters level in higher education. The authors outline the relatively unregulated nature of the development of Masters level education provision in Greece, with very significant expansion of provision continuing without any apparent focus on the student experience of the Masters courses. The authors report on the deployment of a pilot survey to gauge the perceptions of graduates of a Masters course in Healthcare Management. The respondents were graduates from three different Greek universities who came from a variety of disciplines and demographics. The authors advocate greater use of some form of graduate satisfaction survey in the Greek higher education system.

The fourth paper by Baboucarr Njie and Roselan Baki presents the results of a qualitative study of the experience of international students from different countries and disciplines studying on the campus of a Malaysian university. Many international students spend a disproportionate amount of time on university campuses because they have on campus accommodation and, in many cases, they are focused on the completion of their academic program so that they can return home, or enter the workforce and benefit from their enhanced academic qualifications. Consequently, the features of the campus, in terms of the physical appearance and the facilities, together with the focus of on campus staff on service provision, impact very significantly on the overall experience of international students. The qualitative nature of the study provides important and detailed insights into the international student experience, highlighting the differences between the needs of the domestic student and those of the international student.

The penultimate paper by Sik Sumaedi, I Gede Mahatma Yuda Bakti and Nur Metasari reports on an investigation of the perception of service quality based on respondents from two State universities in Indonesia. The authors relate their work with respondents from their developing economy to the work of other authors who have addressed service quality in institutions in developed economies. They conclude that facilities constitute the most important determinant of service quality and observe that their respondents in different levels of seniority in their course of study hold different views of social activities while there is a gender difference for the views of social activities and facilities.

The final paper by Kim O’Mahony and Thomas Garavan reports on work in an increasingly important aspect of educational infrastructure, the information and communications technology provision. Information technology now permeates all aspects of the education landscape, from the storage and management of student records, through library provision and access to databases of journals and other information and data sources, to the use of research tools like statistical packages, communication between university personnel and between staff and students and into the classroom. The ubiquity of information technology highlights the importance of the information technology support functions to the effective operation of most aspects of academic life. The authors report on their findings in the case of implementation of quality management in an information technology division of a higher education institution in the Republic of Ireland. The authors report on an analysis of the documentation of the development of the quality system and interviews with key respondents to draw lessons about the deployment of quality management in a service division in higher education.

In this issue, we have four papers from areas of the Euro-zone that are currently engaged with the European Higher Education Area developments and there is clearly an increased focus on quality at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. In addition, there are two papers from emerging economies where the focus on enhanced quality in the education sector is apparent. The Editorial Team hopes that the papers in this issue provide interesting insights for the readership.

John DalrympleEditor