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The legislative requirements for measuring quality in transnational education: Understanding divergence while maintaining standards
Author(s) -
Bentley Duncan,
Henderson Fiona,
Lim Choon Boey
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
higher education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.976
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1468-2273
pISSN - 0951-5224
DOI - 10.1111/hequ.12131
Subject(s) - legislature , agency (philosophy) , quality (philosophy) , context (archaeology) , higher education , divergence (linguistics) , public relations , maturity (psychological) , political science , sociology , business , social science , law , paleontology , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology , biology
Australian universities have been actively engaged in transnational education since the 1990s. The challenges of assuring quality have seen a changing regulatory framework increasingly designed to ensure equivalence of standards wherever a course of study is offered and however it is delivered. Transnational Higher Education has grown significantly and the issues that flow from operating across jurisdictions, cultures and contexts have been addressed primarily by institutions themselves in complying with regulation. This article identifies how the Australian quality agency TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency) has revised its Standards Framework to support divergence appropriate to local culture and context, while assuring quality provision across the student life cycle. It concludes that the maturity of the quality agency may not yet reflect the provision of transnational education in practice. The article identifies a need for significant further research so that theory and practice can reflect opportunities to better serve students in a mature quality environment.