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In April 1998, the legal status of further education colleges in Northern Ireland changed (Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997). Their new legal status offers colleges the opportunity to develop a greater business focus while preserving a robust framework of public accountability. Colleges will need to respond in a balanced fashion to the competing demands made by multiple stakeholders. In order to assist colleges to respond to these challenges, the Department of Education (NI) has commissioned the Business Development Service, an agency within the Department of Finance and Personnel, to provide consultancy to those colleges which wish to explore the use of the business excellence quality model (developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management 1988‐1991). This paper evaluates the relevance and validity of this approach for all 17 further education colleges in Northern Ireland.

Accreditation reviews represent an important component of many educational institutions’ quality assurance systems. Integrating application for a quality award into the reaccreditation process can add a new dimension to the reaccreditation process and provide a college with significant benefits. The College of Business and Economics at the University of Idaho used application for the Idaho Quality Award, which is based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, as its primary means for carrying out the self‐evaluation process required for AACSB professional reaccreditation. This paper discusses the college’s experiences combining AACSB self‐evaluation with application for a state quality award, describing the motivation for using this approach, how the college went about it, and the significant benefits that the college realized as a result.

The high value that Japanese place upon college prestige suggests that Japanese families will do whatever it takes to gain entry into the nation’s top colleges, including paying the high costs of preparation, tuition, or relocation. Of all the costs confronting parents of college-bound students, the greatest is that of migration, or the cost of attending college away from home. I use a 1995 cross-sectional dataset to examine how the pursuit of college quality factors into migration decisions among college students in Japan. My findings clearly show that the difference in university resources across regions is an important factor in determining migration decisions, while financial considerations are secondary.

Provides a model of human capital search by examining college student migration across states. Tests pertinent investment and consumption benefits. Employs OLS estimation for 49 states, with unique measures for college quality, college climate, and college location. Tests income and price parameters, as well as “super‐selectivity” among certain college groups. The variables for price and college quality are highly significant, while the evidence with consumption benefits remains unresolved. Although several policy options remain open to college administrations, certain public choice incentives may act to impede the working of the university as a “firm”.

There is no such thing as a truly centralized or decentralized management system. With regard to universities, most of the key areas in universities are centralized, e.g. finance, personnel, curriculum, management and quality. These key areas will exhibit a higher impact on learning and research by maintaining the appropriate balance between centralization and decentralization approaches. The purpose of this paper is to study the key features of balanced management implemented within the internal quality assurance system at the University of Bahrain. Areas of such balance will be explained while showing the pros and cons of each management approach.

In this paper, both quantitative and qualitative surveys were used to study this balanced approach.

The centralization approach at the university maintained systematic compliance through the development of policies and procedures, quality structure and a clear framework for quality enhancement. Centralization ensured consistency in quality, programmes and activities. It also maintained diffusion of innovation, for example, sharing and transferring the knowledge of international accreditation practices to other colleges. The balance of the centralized with the decentralized management approach provided additional advantages. For example, the management shared the vision of decentralization to raise the level of responsibility and accountability. The management provided an acceptable level of authority to take on spot decisions; hence, building expertise at the decentralized levels. However, this would require support and capacity building to ensure directly responsible persons, who can take on spot decisions. The ownership of the self-improvement cycles was implemented at the level of the departments and colleges.

This study showed that this balanced management had a great influence to maximize the benefits of the internal quality assurance (IQA) system, as it showed that 71.4 and 67.3 per cent of the academic and administrative staff, respectively, found that the IQA system was effective.

This balanced approach would guide the universities to enhance its quality system by organizing its structure, processes and systems in a harmonized nature.

This research study is conducted to thoroughly investigate the users' expectations for excellent library service quality (LSQ) from college libraries. It will also identify whether there is any difference in the desired library service quality among different type of users, gender and academic discipline.

A survey method was used, and the data were collected from 998 respondents, which included faculty members, masters, bachelor's and intermediate students. In order to conduct the study, LibQUAL + instrument were adapted.

The results demonstrated that the users expected a higher level of services from the college libraries of Pakistan. The highest desired expectation of the users were related to “library as a place (LP)” dimension, while the lowest expectation was with regards to the “information control (IC)” dimension. The results indicated a significant difference among the various types of users and academic disciplines regarding their expectations with library services.

The appointment of college librarians against nearly 500 vacant posts would significantly improve the LSQ in these libraries. The result of the study would indeed be useful for the college administration, librarians the Government of the Punjab and the Punjab Higher Education Commission (HEC) for future planning, improvement of services and allocation of resources.

This study is the first in-depth effort into investigating the LSQ of the college libraries of the Punjab, Pakistan. This study will be helpful to understand the LSQ from developing countries’ perspective.

This paper aims to examine the roles of quality managers at community colleges, their experiences balancing accountability and improvement and their insights into the future of quality assurance.

This phenomenological, qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with eight community college quality managers to investigate their roles, experiences and perspectives. A reflexive thematic approach was used to analyze the interview data.

Four themes were identified from participant responses: quality managers frame and enable program quality, quality managers drive program change, quality managers cultivate a culture of quality and quality managers seek system change. The findings illustrate the roles played by quality managers as they work to improve college education at program, institution and system-wide levels.

The decision of participants to accept the recruitment invitation might reflect particular attitudes, perspectives or experiences.

Quality assurance has emerged as a key mechanism for ensuring postsecondary programs are current, relevant and meeting the evolving needs of students and employers. This study advances the understanding of how quality assurance processes play out at the operational level and explores the experiences of quality managers as they navigate various quality tensions.

Quality managers play key roles in leading, evaluating and influencing quality assurance processes in postsecondary education yet they are underrepresented in the literature. The findings of this study shed new light on the aspirational and influential roles they play in advancing quality assurance.

The purpose of this paper is to present the influence of the human resource (HR) manager on the quality of service in an academic college, and the human resource management (HRM) outcomes of the process.

The paper relates to a customer satisfaction survey. More than 120 questionnaires were completed by the customers (Israeli college students) for each service provider (e.g. academic departments, the students' dean, the maintenance and the logistics departments) measuring customer satisfaction via different dimensions of quality.

By getting involved in the service quality improvement process, the HR manager was exposed to HRM problems such as non‐balanced workload, faulty work planning, lack of knowledge and skills, wrong placements, unclear job descriptions, etc. This information led to meaningful improvement in HRM processes (e.g. training programs, job descriptions, selection and placement and manpower planning).

The paper discusses the HRM practical outcomes of processes carried out to improve the quality of the organizational services. The suggested process and the implications are relevant for every HRM system.

The paper reflects the great affect that a HR manager (as part of the top management) has on the quality of service through HRM processes and practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine faculty members' perceptions over time with respect to the concept of quality assurance; the evaluation objects and the rationale for choosing them; and attitudes toward the application of this process in the college and in its academic units.

This a qualitative longitudinal case study of one veteran college of education in the center of Israel. The leading faculty members under study comprised 17 subject‐matter department heads specializing in the humanities, science and in education. All of them implemented an internal evaluation in their departments as part of a quality assurance process. The study involved two rounds of semi‐structured interviews: at the beginning of the process and two‐and‐a‐half years later, using categorical content analysis.

The results indicate that time is required for the process to mature, for process objection level to decline and for assertive leadership to evolve. Positive attitudes emerge when faculty members are given the opportunity to act in an autonomous atmosphere, when organizational learning frameworks are established and when variety is legitimized. Furthermore, faculty members take responsibility and understand that the process improves the quality of their work. Overall, perceptions of processes changed from quality assurance as external supervision imposed on the institution, to quality enhancement emerging from the academic faculty and from the needs of the institution.

For decision makers and practitioners in higher education, this case study represents one stage in building an organizational culture, that can contribute in the future to external quality assurance processes when required by stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel interval Multi-Objective Optimization by a Ratio Analysis plus the Full Multiplicative Form(MULTIMOORA) with combination weights to evaluate the employment quality of college graduates, where the criteria are expressed by interval numbers and the weights of criteria are completely unknown.

Firstly, considering the subjective uncertainty of the weights of the criteria, the interval best worst method (I-BWM) was present to determine the subjective weights of the criteria. Secondly, by the improved interval number distance measure, an improved interval deviation maximization method (I-MDM) was introduced to detemine the objective weights. In the following, based on the I-BWM and the improved I-MDM, a combination weighting method that takes into account the subjective and objective weights is proposed. Finally, a multi-criteria decision-making method based on the interval MULTIMOORA with combination weights is present to evaluate the employment quality of college graduates, and then a comparative analysis with some of the existing distance measures of interval numberswas conducted to illustrate the flexibility.

According to the data of the Report on Employment Quality of Chinese College Graduats released by Mycos Research Institute in 2016–2020 and 2021–2022, the proposed method was used to evaluate the employment quality of college graduates during the period before and after the COVID-19 epidemic. The results verify that the method is more reasonable because the subjective and objective weights of the criteria can be fully considered. Finally, the feasibility and practicability of the proposed method are further verified by varying parameters.

Present an evaluation method on the employment quality of college graduates based on the Interval MULTIMOORA with combination weights considering the subjective and objective weights. And the proposed method is proved that it can provide a more reasonable evaluation results. At the same time, it is verified that the feasibility and the practicability of the proposed method are affected by varying parameters in the paper.