Quality Assurance and Mass Higher Education – learning from experiences

Abstract

The old debate of Quality verses Equality remains valid even as the Quality Assurance in HE is coming of an age. The paper attempts to reflect on how these maturing QA mechanisms have succeeded in responding to quality concerns while accommodating the nuances of massification of higher education. 

By  taking NAAC, India as a case in point, the  paper makes reflections on issues like:

• Whether Quality Assurance and Concerns for Equality & Participation still confront each other?


• Can affirmative action be an excuse to offer low quality Higher Education provision?


• If scarce national resources in developing countries are being invested in Higher Education, then is not it more relevant to demand quality as value for money?


• If the present models are inadequate, then are there any alternative models to take care of huge number and diversity?

The paper aims at contributing to the efforts of QAAS in addressing such concerns by collecting and collating experiences to draw the lessons for further fine-tuning the QA methodologies, policies and practices.