Reality checks

The THES asked two quality experts what they thought of a kite-marking system for UK courses overseas Geoffrey Alderman, head of Middlesex University's academic development and quality assurance unit, is uneasy about the British Council's involvement in the discussions on kite-marking. He pointed out that the British Council was itself a provider of programmes.

"They cannot be both poacher and gamekeeper. In any case, if my own experiences are anything to go by, the role of the British Council in defending British university interests abroad is a very uninspiring one," he said.

Professor Alderman thought a kite-marking system would be "excessively bureaucratic" and institutions would be unwilling to pay for the service when they were already paying subscriptions to the Quality Assurance Agency.

"It would take a long time to implement and the reputation of our universities is such that we do not need any other kite-mark," he said.

However, Roger Brown, principal of Southampton Institute and former chief executive of the Higher Education Quality Council, is less confident about the reputation of British universities abroad and sees other potential problems with the kite-marking idea.

An analysis of overseas quality audits in ten countries, conducted by Dr Brown, suggested most institutions would struggle to achieve the required standard.

"I am not exactly against a kite-mark, but you have to consider the reality of what is happening on the ground. Such a system would cost a lot of money and it would be very difficult to set up because, if you look at recent audit reports, very few institutions would be kite-marked. If you lowered the standard so that more institutions qualified, it would not be worth very much," he said.

A much better system, he added, would be for the representative bodies of institutions, including the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, to expel from their membership institutions that regularly received critical quality audit reports. This would encourage institutions to either improve their programmes or withdraw them.

Another difficulty, identified by Dr Brown in an article for the Journal of International Education, is what legal obligations the QAA would take on in either a kite-marking system or a certification scheme.

"Would the kite-marker be validating the institutions' quality assurance arrangements or would it be validating the quality of the education the student was actually receiving? If it was the latter, would the student be able to make a claim against the kite-marker?" Dr Brown asked.