Understanding academic standards in context of the massification and internationalisation of Australian higher education

© 2011 Dr. Scott Thompson-WhitesideAcademic standards are a central value system within higher education, but are largely abstract, diffuse and tacitly understood within institutions. With national and international demands for greater transparency, precision and accountability of academic standards, this study examines the principles and practices of setting, monitoring and assessing academic standards in a contemporary higher education setting. The study explores the notion of what is meant by academic standards and how standards are determined, implemented and measured within Australian universities. Through semi- structured interviews with policy makers and institutional leaders, as well as extensive documentary analysis, the study provides a contemporary analysis of academic standards. The study begins with a historical and linguistic analysis of standards, providing the necessary theoretical basis for understanding standards in higher education. Terms like quality, excellence and standards are interconnected, but used loosely in higher education. Within Australia, academic standards are broadly viewed as a set of implicit thresholds, consisting of many types of standards, measured with many types of criteria. However, the study finds that there is considerable diversity between processes of setting standards, processes of measuring standards and the relationships between each process. In many circumstances, the processes are tacit and often conflated. There is no consensus to what types of standard best represent academic standards, or what criterion best determines the nature and level of that standard. Historically, traditional notions of academic standards derive from small, elite cohorts of students and staff. The criteria for setting and assessing standards were socially and culturally tied to those elite traditions. In a mass, international higher education system, where institutions, students and staff are more diverse, those traditions are being tested. There is little evidence to suggest that general academic standards have declined, but the traditional dimensions and criteria by which standards are set, monitored and achieved have shifted towards outcome measures. Measuring the capabilities, skills and knowledge of graduates is becoming more important in understanding the standards of an institution. However, the instrumental ideology of measuring graduate outcomes has the potential to create narrow conceptions of what standards should be. Given the increased student diversity in a mass system, this is creating tensions in the processes of teaching, learning and assessment. The study examines how these traditional reference points have shifted and provides an analysis of the complexities and consequences that exist in a mass, international higher education environment. The findings of this research are timely and significant in view of ongoing Australian policy changes and the formation of a new national regulatory body and standards framework. The author concludes that the massification and internationalisation of Australian higher education is creating complex tensions between local, national and international criteria for determining and measuring standards. In some situations, the criteria and thresholds set at a national level are conflicting with those set at a local or international level. Comprehensive, research-intensive institutions are likely to reference themselves against the criteria and thresholds set at an international level. For other types of institutions, local and national standards still dominate, but the global reach of performance indicators and their potential impact on reputation and student demand, mean that internationally set criteria are increasingly influencing how academic standards are represented