| Over the last decade the structure of higher education in
most countries has undergone significant change brought about by social
demands for expanded access, technological developments, and market forces.
In this period of change the traditional concerns with access and cost
have been supplemented by a new concern with academic quality. As a consequence,
new public policies on academic quality and new forms of academic quality
assurance have rapidly emerged and swiftly migrated across continents and
around the globe.
While there has also been a commensurate increase in the literature
on academic quality, only a small amount of this scholarship directly addresses
the design, implementation, and impacts of these new policies and practices.
The rich and growing public debate about academic quality assurance within
and across countries is therefore not well informed by analyses of the
strengths and weaknesses of these new policy instruments. The goal of the
Research Program on Public Policy for Academic Quality is to help fill
this void with relevant policy analysis. The Program will conduct analyses
of innovative policies on academic quality assurance and associated practices,
utilizing the knowledge of informed scholars from throughout the world,
and providing the analyses in a comprehensible, easily accessible format.
The analyses will be as fair-minded as possible, assessing the relative
costs and benefits of the respective policies from the perspective of the
overall "public interest."
We recognize that the framework of rules and policies affecting academic
quality within a state or country as well as in the larger global community
is evolving and will unlikely follow a single form. Our intent therefore
is not to discover the "one best" policy, but to provide as a public good
information and analyses that can help inform and enrich the ongoing public
debate.
Full
text of the paper on the Perspectives of the PPAQ Research Program
(91k - .pdf) |
 |
