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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/199197
- Title
- Quality in contemporary higher education: the role of academic governance
- Author(s)
- Dalrymple, John F.
- Abstract
- This paper explores the context of contemporary higher education that includes technological change, societal change and changes in the perception of higher education in modern society. It takes as axiomatic that maintaining academic standards is an integral part of quality in higher education. The developments in internet access and information and communications technologies present significant contributions to teaching, learning and research. However, there are also significant threats to maintaining academic standards. The paper examines these issues as well as the influence of consumerism, perceptions of the student as 'customer' and the influence of the 'student voice' in the performance review of academic staff on academic standards. This encompasses the role of higher education in the modern world, consideration of the influence of 'student centred teaching', the nature of learning and the dilemma that the modern academic faces in balancing the role of teacher, educator, facilitator of learning and the custodian of academic standards through the requirement to appropriately 'credential' individual students at graduation. The paper advances the case that the counterbalance to the forces that face the contemporary academic in causing 'grade creep' lies in a sound system of academic governance. The presence of such a system of academic governance coupled with an appropriate approach to assessment instruments provides the infrastructure that enables the defence of academic standards for the benefit of institutions, their academic staff, the individual graduate and all alumni of the institution.
- Publication type
- Book chapter
- Source
- Quality assurance in higher education: a global perspective / Abdul Roauf, and Niaz Ahmed Akhtar (eds.),
- Publication year
- 2008
- Keyword(s)
- Academic governance; Higher education; Quality assurance
- Publisher
- Higher Education Commission Pakistan
- ISBN
- 978969417128
- Publisher URL
- http://publications.hec.gov.pk/social-sciences/quality-assurance-in-higher-education-:-a-global-perspective.html
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2008
- Peer reviewed
