Standards in our universities are closely monitored, argues DR PADRAIG WALSH
THE ISSUE of so-called “grade inflation” has led to much recent media comment about the standards of Irish university awards and concern about the quality of university graduates. It has led to calls for much more serious scrutiny of regulatory authorities such as the Irish Universities Quality Board (IUQB).
To address concerns about quality and standards, it should be noted that the performance of the Irish university sector is not “average”. Two of our colleges are ranked in the world top 100 and all seven were ranked in the top 200 universities in Europe.
In relation to the international standing of Irish graduates, the world university rankings contain a score for employer review. Two of the Irish universities score in the mid- to high-90th percentiles on this ranking and all score over the 60th percentile.
There was an increase in the percentage of students graduating with first-class honours from the universities from 1994 to 2004, largely due to the response of universities to comments from external examiners that Irish students were being disadvantaged by the reluctance to award the top grade.
However, from 2004 to 2008, the percentage of first-class honours awarded in honours bachelors degrees (level 8) in the seven Irish universities were 13 per cent, 15 per cent, 13 per cent, 14 per cent and 14 per cent.
It must be noted that there is a greater variation in the award of first-class honours between different disciplines in the same university than there is between the same disciplines in different universities. This variation is largely due to traditional marking practices in the different disciplines and this data should be highlighted and be subject to further research and analysis.
In relation to the quality oversight of Irish universities, it is important to stress that unlike secondary school, there is no prescribed national curriculum for universities. Irish universities are autonomous, responsible for developing, delivering and assessing the content of their programmes and for making and quality assuring their awards.
The system of assessing and grading of students by the teachers themselves, its supervision by internal examinations boards and the input of the external examiners appointed by the university to check this process describes the university’s internal quality assurance system.
Since 1997, the Universities Act requires universities to additionally undertake evaluations of each of their academic departments using external experts and to publish the findings (all are available on the universities’ websites from the IUQB website). This is a further element of the universities’ internal quality- assurance system.
The 1997 Act also requires each university board (governing authority) to commission periodic reviews of the effectiveness of each university’s internal QA system. In 2002, the governing authorities of the seven Irish universities established the Irish Universities Quality Board and passed this external review function over to it. The IUQB commissions these reviews and publish the findings and recommendations arising from them. In respect of the outcomes of these reviews, IUQB exercises no regulatory powers.
All seven universities were evaluated (by external international experts) in 2004 with the reports published in 2005. A second cycle of reviews was agreed in March 2009.
The first evaluation, of NUI Maynooth, will be published today. The second evaluation report, of DCU, will be published in June. Reviews of the other universities will follow at the rate of two per year.
In 2008, IUQB was evaluated by an external review panel (including international experts), to ensure it was operating within the agreed European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance. The IUQB received full membership of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA).
In 2009, following scrutiny by the European Register Committee, IUQB was accepted on to the European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR).
The IUQB has members from the Irish university sector on its board but it also has a majority (60 per cent) of external members. It is chaired by a retired supreme court judge and contains nominees of IBEC, USI, ICTU, HEA, plus international members. All quality-assurance agencies for higher education contain members from the institutions that they evaluate.
The IUQB, in its public submission in June 2009 to the National Strategy on Higher Education, called for internal university quality review reports to be tailored to non-specialist audiences such as prospective and current students, parents and employers; a modernisation of the external examiner system; an improvement in how the public can access detailed and reliable information on the quality of individual study programmes, faculties and higher education institutions.
The decision to amalgamate the various qualifications and quality assurance bodies (FETAC, HETAC, NQAI and the functions of IUQB) was announced in the budget of October 2008 and not, as has been alleged, after US multinationals complained about the standard of Irish graduates nor in the wake of the recent official inquiry into so-called “grade inflation” .
The Irish university system (institutions, funding bodies and quality-assurance agencies) must, however, be more transparent and must improve how it informs the public as to who is responsible for standards and quality and how it intends to provide sufficient data and, more importantly, a sufficient level of analysis about the system to the public.
Dr Padraig Walsh is chief executive of the Irish Universities Quality Board
