THES reporters examine the latest plans from the Quality Assurance Agency.
External examiners
Quality chiefs are preparing to recruit an army of "academic reviewers" to check whether external examiners are doing their job properly.
The Quality Assurance Agency is about to issue a new code of practice for external examiners, who are the guardians of degree standards, says the external examiner system is "not to be relied upon in all circumstances".
A leaked QAA document says that despite the doubts about external examiners, a new quality assurance system to be phased in from next year will still rely "heavily" on their reports.
Teams of subject specialists, called academic reviewers, will therefore be needed to sample students' work to verify external examiners' judgements. Where these are found wanting, the reviewers will scrutinise students' examination papers, assessments, dissertations and projects to satisfy themselves that standards are up to scratch.
The QAA says "there is little point in having external examiners (albeit working for and reporting to the institutions) and a QAA code of practice for their function, if their work is ignored or duplicated".
The reviewers will therefore rely "in part" on external examiners' judgements where checks find them to be trustworthy.
They will also be able to rely on institutions' internal reviews of teaching standards where it can be demonstrated that these are done rigorously.
However, "where reviewers are not satisfied that they have sufficient evidence to make judgement, they will be perfectly entitled to go into classes", the document says.
Benchmarks
The document spells out for the first time how the QAA hopes to use definitions of standards, called "benchmarks", being developed in each subject area.
The benchmark information will help academic reviewers place departments in one of three quality categories - the lowest indicates failure to meet the minimum "threshold" standard on a degree course; the middle grade shows a minimum standard is met; and the top category is for departments achieving standards appropriate to the "typical" student.
The document warns that reviewers must "guard against the setting of mundane, easily achievable standards". Subject benchmarking groups should therefore define standards expected of the "typical" student, as well as the minimum level of achievement needed to gain a degree, it says.
The QAA says it is working to a tight timetable to introduce the system, expected to be up and running in Scotland and Wales from October next year and in England and Northern Ireland from January 2002. Scottish and Welsh institutions will be expected to submit their plans for subject review by October this year, and the briefing and training of reviewers will take place between May and October next year.
Postgraduates
Oxbridge has hit out at the proposals for a postgraduate qualifications framework that would mean dropping traditional MAs.
Responding to a consultation paper from the QAA, the University of Cambridge says the proposals pose a threat to diversity. It says: "The paper makes no reference to the quality of postgraduate provision, a far more significant issue than that of nomenclature."
Oxford has also attacked the "prescriptive nature of the proposals" for inhibiting innovation.
But the National Postgraduate Committee argues that consistent nomenclature for postgraduate qualifications "must be one of the fundamental driving forces of any reform of the postgraduate qualifications framework in the UK."
It calls on the QAA not to shy away from the more contentious issues this involves and demands that some titles be changed to reflect the true nature of the qualification in terms of level and credit.
The NPC disagrees with QAA proposals that postgraduate qualifications can be measured through either broad levels or credit systems, particularly at higher levels.
Neither does it support the suggestion that work judged to fail doctoral standards must be resubmitted in order to be awarded a lower qualification.
And the committee wants the proportion of taught postgraduate programmes delivered through undergraduate classes to be a maximum of 10 per cent rather than 25 per cent, as the consultation paper suggests.
One major critic of the paper is the Association of Business Schools, which criticises it for being "inward-looking and nationalistic", and says it is too dependent on vague definitions of levels and concentrates on research-oriented, single-discipline models. It criticises the "apparent lack of understanding of the professionally oriented postgraduate sector".
A QAA spokesman said the agency had received several hundred responses to the paper. A summary of responses will be published over the summer and will be used to inform the final framework.
Distance learning
The QAA has launched new rules to stop universities unscrupulously exploiting overseas student markets and misusing distance-learning technology.
It has published guidelines on the quality assurance of distance learning, which will be issued after consultation as a compulsory code of practice, against which institutions will be judged in quality inspections.
Amid growing concerns that universities are cashing in and failing to properly manage and monitor the quality of overseas or off-campus provision, the QAA has issued 23 "precepts" for management.
Peter Williams, QAA director of institutional review, said: "If the UK is to compete effectively in this borderless market, universities and colleges need to demonstrate to the world that standards and quality are high."
Underlying the guidelines, which cover all off-campus provision, such as internet or email-based courses, is the principle that quality must be assured in the same way as any other form of higher education.
The precepts include: academic standards must be demonstrably comparable with awards delivered in conventional ways; programmes must be approved only after external scrutiny; programmes should be monitored and re-approved regularly; providing institutions must maintain direct control of summative assessments.
The QAA is inviting comments on the guidelines.
Degree-awarding powers
The definition of what qualifies an institution to call itself a university or university college has changed under new QAA guidelines.
The current definition is too brief and general and needs more detail with indications of what evidence is needed to show the title is warranted, the QAA says.
Its report on degree-awarding powers sets out additional criteria on the minimum size, academic scope, outlook, and culture expected of an institution calling itself a university or university college.
The report, which contains controversial proposals for the QAA to be able to remove degree-awarding powers from universities and university colleges, says applicants should not be considered until there has been "a full appraisal of all the options available for the future of the institution". This might include a merger or association with an existing university.
University colleges should no longer be awarded unfettered degree-awarding powers, but should be restricted to awarding degrees in a defined range of subjects. This would prevent a university college from validating provision overseas in areas in which it had no expertise, and would allow degree-awarding powers to be granted to specialist private institutions without the risk that they would be tempted to offer courses in areas outside their specialism.
The report also insists that the general power to validate or accredit the provision of another institution ought to be granted automatically only to universities. A university college should only be allowed to do so once it has a proven record.
The QAA definition of a university demands active commitment to and achievement of:
* The creation, transmission and conservation of knowledge
* Development of expert skills, knowledge and understanding
* An ethos of critical and self-critical inquiry
* Recognition of standards by academic peers and appropriate organisations
* Continual improvements in its ways of doing things.
A university should normally have:
* A higher education enrolment of at least 4,000 full-time equivalent students, at least 3,000 of whom should be on degree courses
* At least 60 research degree registrations and more than 30 doctor of philosophy conferments.