Stakeholder experiences of the Quality Enhancement Project in selected South African Universities

Abstract

This research explored stakeholder experiences of a quality enhancement project (QEP) in South African universities. Stakeholder views were considered regarding the impact of the policy shift embodied by the QEP on implementation strategies and the gains made since its inception in improving student retention and throughput. The study employed a multiple-qualitative case study research design involving four universities (one traditional, one university of technology, one comprehensive, one traditional merger) and purposive sampling. Data collection techniques involved document analysis, in-depth interviews with Deputy Vice Chancellors: Teaching and Learning, Directors: Teaching and Learning, quality assurance (QA) managers, quality enhancement (QE) coordinators, Council on Higher Education (CHE) officials and the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) QA experts and focus group interviews with student leaders. The theoretical framework for this study was drawn from Ball et al.’s (1992) theory on policy processes and it focuses on three contexts of policy processes: the contexts of influence, text production, and practice. The findings revealed multi-layered stakeholder perspectives of the QEP based on stakeholders’ situated contexts in the higher education sector. The CHE and DHET viewed the QEP as an instrument (intervention) to capacitate institutions through promotion of best practice initiatives and collective engagement, shared practice and “learning from each other”. The institutions, on the other hand, were divided on how they experienced the QEP as follows: i) as an essential and valuable process to address structural and transformational issues for institutional effectiveness and change, ii) as an ambitious, uncoordinated, expensive, and to a certain extent futile process for address teaching and learning issues across the sector, and iii) as a lens to evaluate progress in meeting institutional goals and creating graduate attributes. The students expressed feelings of frustration about their voices not being heard in policy and institutional decision-making processes. The findings also revealed the complexities surrounding the shift from quality assurance (QA) to quality enhancement (QE), differences in approach and practice resulting from a lack of common understanding of what policy is, the role played by the QEP and the different understandings amongst the stakeholders about its intentions. At the same time, the lack of a theory underpinning practice translated to different experiences and interpretations of the shift from QA to QE. Strategies employed were informed by individual institutional visions located in the DVC: Teaching and Learning portfolios and not in the collective university community of practice. The findings also revealed that borrowing educational policy from other countries and contexts can have adverse effects for policy implementation owing to differences in political, social, economic and cultural contexts and different institutional dynamics. Importantly also, the top-down approaches where policy makers design policy to fit their ‘mandate’ and ‘philosophy’ of policy resulted in a project mentality that was not useful.