English HE’s global reputation harmed by quality concerns – QAA

Confusion about how quality in English universities is assessed and regulated has already harmed institutions’ ambitions to expand abroad, according to the chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA).

Appearing before the House of Lords’ inquiry into the work of the Office for Students (OfS), Vicki Stott said the regulator’s plan to take the designated quality body (DQB) function in-house now that her own organisation has given up its responsibilities in this area was unlikely to do much to restore the sector’s reputation globally.

The QAA relinquished the role after clashing with the regulator because aspects of the English quality system did not comply with European standards, something that has not gone unnoticed abroad, Ms Stott said.

“I’m afraid I think there could well be concrete impacts on both the sector’s reputation and on its financial sustainability,” she replied when asked what she thought the consequences could be.

“This leads to two major risks: the first around transnational education, about providers’ ability to set up branch campuses or have presences in other nations; and the other, I think, is about international student recruitment.”

She claimed that – in particular – the OfS’ refusal to publish periodic reports into quality at individual providers was viewed with suspicion by foreign governments.

Citing a provider “in the throes” of setting up an Asian branch campus recently, Ms Stott said the government it had been working with became concerned about the lack of any such report and halted progress on the project.

Elsewhere, a Middle Eastern country that had invited universities to set up fully funded campuses in its territory did not make the money available to English providers for the same reasons, preferring instead to partner with European and US universities, Ms Stott claimed.

She said the fact that England had moved away from independent assessment made countries think there is a “problem with English quality”, a perception that is reinforced by press reports about low-quality degrees.

The OfS views its work reviewing data and intelligence gathered on providers as being the equivalent of such assessment, Ms Stott said, but “the fact is that is not visible externally”.

From March, the OfS has temporarily taken on the DQB role – which includes assessing whether providers should be granted degree-awarding powers and carrying out quality and standards reviews – because of an absence of any suitable replacement for the QAA.

Ms Stott said this posed several challenges, not least in keeping up with the practicalities of fulfilling the function, which required the QAA to train and maintain a team of 250 assessors over several years.

An assertion by the OfS in its regulatory advice that it was not necessary to have academic expertise to assess quality was “concerning”, particularly with regard to international compliance, she added.

Also appearing in front of the committee, Simon Gaskell, former president of Queen Mary University of London and now chair of the QAA board, said there had been a “surge of requests to conduct reviews” when the QAA announced its intention to demit, which “might suggest they had some nervousness about taking the function in-house”.

The OfS has claimed that it would have stripped the QAA of its DQB function if the body had not voluntarily stepped back, because of concerns about its independence from the sector and its failure to produce reports that were sufficient for making regulatory decisions.

But the QAA representatives told the Lords that the schism between the two bodies was not terminal, and they would be prepared to take on the role again in future if circumstances allowed.

Professor Gaskell said he suspected that some within the OfS had always intended to take such operations in-house. Asked if the regulator might have concocted reasons to justify decisions that had already been made, he said it would be “disingenuous if we suggested that the possibility had not occurred to us”.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com