LH Martin Institute

Quality Assurance in Hong Kong Higher Education: An East-West Approach

19 January 2012, by Rosalind Chan

Rosalind Chan is Assistant Academic Registrar at the Hong Kong Baptist University. Heading the Academic Quality Support Section, she coordinates external reviews of academic units and monitors the implementation of the quality assurance measures of the University. She has recently completed a Graduate Certificate in Quality Assurance at the LH Martin Institute.

The higher education sector in Hong Kong is a relatively small and exclusive group comprising of eight publicly-funded institutions. These institutions cater to about 18 percent of the eligible age group within Hong Kong’s population of seven million. The University Grants Committee (UGC) was formed by the Hong Kong government to safeguard and promote quality among these publicly-funded institutions. Since its inception, the UGC has conducted a number of reviews of universities, such as the Management Review (1998-1999), the Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPR) (1995-1997 and 2001-2003), the Performance and Role-Related Funding Scheme (2004), and, most recently, the first round of Quality Audits (2008-2011). As their names suggest, each review has a different focus and emphasis; the Management Review focused on management structure and effectiveness, the TLQPR scrutinized the processes of teaching and learning, and the Performance and Role-Related Funding Scheme and Quality Audits looked into the roles and fitness for purpose of each institution.

Meanwhile, the sector is preparing for a major overhaul of its curriculum, which will revert from a three-year to a four-year system in the 2012/2013 academic year. This curriculum change brings with it, among others, the adoption of new assessment methods in line with the government’s aim for an outcomes-based approach in teaching and learning. This means all staff and students of universities have to re-familiarize themselves with the new ‘rules of the game’. While, for staff and administration, there is the added challenge of having both student cohorts from the old school system (studying within the three-year curriculum) and those from the new system (within the four-year curriculum) simultaneously attending classes, using university facilities and requiring faculty manpower for at least three years until those in the superseded curriculum graduate.

Against this background, the UGC has proposed changes to its next round of Quality Audits, which will take place in the next five to six years. It proposed the adoption of a review model which focuses on academic standards and education outcomes rather than fitness for purpose. For instance, it suggested a review of student engagement to be made part of the exercise with student representatives serving as panel members. It would also utilise self-evaluation documents and public information produced by each institution along with sector-wide surveys for comparing each institution’s performance against the others’.

While welcoming the new reviews as a good opportunity to conduct self-reflection and analyse their own strengths and weaknesses in the face of the new curriculum, Hong Kong’s publicly-funded institutions have questioned whether adopting the new model was justified. On the contrary, the institutions’ generally-held views are that subsequent audits or reviews should build on the findings of the previous one – to check on their overall progress and the effectiveness of their follow-up measures. They also argued that the context and culture differences between the sector in Hong Kong and those in the UK, North America and Australia renders the proposed overseas-inspired review model unsuitable. For instance, the eight publicly-funded institutions in Hong Kong exercise their self-accrediting power effectively, minimising the variation in academic standards between them, unlike in the UK, North America or Australia. As such, the focus on academic standards and education outcomes proposed in the new round of reviews was viewed as inappropriate.

Moreover, although the suggestion of including student engagement in the reviews was welcomed, the universities pointed out that the culture of student involvement in unions and related activities are very different to students in western countries. Typically there are only a small number of sabbatical officers in universities and the majority of coursework postgraduate students are working adults while research postgraduate students are faced with the time pressure to complete their projects. Hence, the inclusion of a selected group of students on a review panel may meet with practical difficulties in the Hong Kong context.

So what would work? The institutions suggest that a ‘maintenance check’ which uses an interactive process would be more suitable, such as that adopted by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International which emphasises on on-line and ongoing reviews. This would work even better if a strong quality assurance culture is already nurtured within the institution where external checks present an opportunity for stock-taking and forward planning rather than something that must be complied with. Therefore, both the UGC and the universities have their parts to play if quality assurance in higher education is to be effective and mutually beneficial.