Improving Higher Education: Total Quality Care (The Society for Research into Higher Education)

This text provides the first systematic exploration of the topic of quality in higher education. Ronald Barnett examines the meaning of quality and its improvement at the levels of both the institution and the course - contemporary discussion having tended to focus on one or the other, without integtrating the two perspectives. He argues against a simple identification of equality assessment with numerical performance indicators or with academic audit or with the messages of the market. These are the contending definitions of the modern age, but they all contain interests tangential to the main business of higher education. Dr Barnett offers an alternative approach which begins from a sense of educators attempting to promote an open-ended development in their students. It is this view of higher education which, he argues, should be at the heart of our thinking about quality. Quality cannot be managed, but it can be cared for. Building on the conceptual base he established, Dr Barnett offers proposals for action in assessing institutional performance, in reviewing the quality of course programmes, and in improving the curriculum and the character of the student experience.