Higher Education Review Process

Striving for Quality: Learning, Teaching and Scholarship

6. future challenges and ways forward

• d. commonwealth role in the quality of teaching and learning

d. commonwealth role in the quality of teaching and learning

275  Professor Brian Wilson observed that there are two main traditions of governance in universities in the western world – the Continental model and the British model: 

The former is a tightly State-controlled model, with the main controls applied to inputs rather than outputs. The over-riding goal may be described as: ‘to employ higher education effectively for the good of the government and the national economy’. Mechanisms of quality control include the annual appropriation of line-item budgets, civil servant status for the academic staff and government approval procedures for new study programs. In the British tradition, the State is less directly involved with universities. University charters or acts of establishment provide considerable autonomy, with freedom to select staff under their own criteria, to devise the curriculum and to award degrees. (1996, p.152) 

276  Increasingly, higher education institutions operating from both traditions have been subject to increased government interest in the monitoring and enhancement of the quality of higher education through new forms of measurement of institutional performance and creation of “new relations of accountability between universities and external stakeholders” (Naidoo, 2000, p.25). 

277  Over the past decade, universities in the United Kingdom have been subject to a high degree of external scrutiny from the independent body, the Quality Assurance Agency. Much of this attention has been at the behest of the funding councils, which commissioned the QAA to carry out a range of activities. After some years of public debate and agitation, in the past year the ‘heavy hand’ of the QAA has been considerably lightened. The new QAA chief executive Peter Williams has claimed that: 

The new framework puts responsibility for quality and standards where it belongs – in the institutions themselves. (MacLeod, 2002) 

278  Australian self-accrediting higher education institutions have a large degree of autonomy over the management of the quality of teaching and learning. In this environment, what role does the Commonwealth government have in assessing, monitoring or ensuring the quality of higher education institutions? 

279  The Commonwealth has already taken a significant role in the enhancement of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. There is arguably no other country with such a rich history of government recognition of and support for teaching and learning. This has occurred through a number of programmes and initiatives and through the creation and support of a number of ministerial committees. The former National Priority (Reserve) Fund and the current Higher Education Innovation Programme have funded numerous projects to enhance teaching and learning. The approaches of the various ministerial committees evolved over the decade to address emerging needs and provide the most strategic and opportune support for teaching and learning developments. 

280  In March 1990, the Commonwealth Staff Development Fund (CSDF) was established by the Commonwealth Government. It arose from the application of the Structural Efficiency Principle (SEP) to higher education and against the background of the ending of the binary system. Through this fund, staff development was formally recognised as an important part of the evolution of a more effective university system. The fund invited universities to apply for competitive grants to improve staff development opportunities in their institutions.

281  The Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching (CAUT) was established in June 1992, having been foreshadowed in the policy statement of October 1991, Higher Education: Quality and Diversity in the 1990s. This paper initially envisaged the establishment of an independent National Centre for Teaching Excellence. However, following consultation with the higher education sector, it was decided that a Ministerially appointed committee would be a more effective way of encouraging good practice and innovation in university teaching. The role of CAUT was to promote the development of good teaching practice in higher education and to make recommendations to the Minister on National Teaching Development Grants. CAUT was commissioned for three years, followed by a review period that led to the formation of the Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development (CUTSD) in 1996.

282  This Committee was established for a three-year period from 1997-99 to promote quality and excellence in university teaching. The principal tasks of the Committee were to make recommendations to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs under the provisions of the Higher Education Funding Act 1988, for the funding of National Teaching Development Grants for innovative teaching enhancement projects for individual academics and institutional organisational units in universities; and grants for academic and administrative staff development projects.

283  The Australian Universities Teaching Committee (AUTC) was established in January 2000 with the brief to continue the focus on teaching and learning initiated and sustained by its predecessors, but to do so by adopting a different strategic direction centred on projects of national significance. The AUTC also has responsibility for the Australian Awards for University Teaching, one of the most prestigious award programmes in the world for teachers in universities.

284  The most significant criticism of the AUTC’s predecessors has been that they did not achieve wide dissemination of good practice generated by the teaching and learning developments funded by grants programmes. The AUTC’s focus on projects of national significance has been an attempt to ensure broader dissemination, but more could be done to ensure the investment in past grants programmes produces benefits for the quality of teaching and learning across the sector. Future directions for the AUTC need to be part of the discussion about the quality of teaching and learning in Australian higher education.

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