IRISH higher education institutions could have a quality assurance framework in place by the start of the next academic year, if the Higher Education Authority's plans reach fruition.

Quality assurance, typified for many by the ISO 9000 standards common in the business world, is now being extended into the educational environment and Irish third level institutions could soon be required to introduce similar standards according to a national, and possibly international framework.

In academic terms, quality assurance covers a range of areas including course structures and aims, lecturing standards, facilities, staff mobility and rewards and student satisfaction.

One does have to be careful when the topic of discussion is quality assurance in higher education. No body likes being put under the microscope and academics in particular have traditionally been uncomfortable with attempts to quantify their methods and their results.

It's undoubtedly the case that management of change is always difficult and because it's new there is a certain distrust of the purposes underpinning quality assessment," says Jim Donaldson, a member of the European Management Group for a recent pilot project on quality assurance.

"There is distrust, until such time as people, and academics in particular, become familiar with the process. There is always suspicion, distrust, initially."

Under the terms of the study, 46 institutions in 17 countries conducted their own self assessment, supplemented by an inspection by a panel of external peers. The result of the external peers' visit and deliberations was then made public.

At a recent conference on quality assurance in higher education, held in Dublin to hear the results of the EU pilot project and the experience of the participating Irish colleges, UCD and Limerick RTC, a number of people were treading very gingerly around the subject. There were to be no sudden movements. There was no need to be alarmed.

"It's a very live issue," C. Noel Lindsay, chairman of the Higher Education Authority, corrected me gently when I referred to quality assessment as a "hot" issue. The type of quality assessment practised in the UK, where disciplines are publicly graded and the threat of reductions in funding can result from a continuing unsatisfactory standard, may have made some Irish academics uneasy about the possible introduction of a similar system here.

UNDER the UK system, an institution's disciplines are rated under one of four categories, ranging from "excellent" to "unsatisfactory". An excellent rating leads to an increase of five per cent in funded student places, both as a reward and as a means of ensuring that the institution will be able to meet the demand for extra student places resulting from the publication of the "excellent" rating.

On the other hand, an "unsatisfactory" rating for two years in a row could lead to a penalty in the form of a reduction in funding although, interestingly, no discipline has yet had an unsatisfactory rating without cleaning up its act for the following year's inspection.

The HEA chairman was anxious to ensure that no erroneous conclusions were reached about the prospect of a quality assurance system being introduced in this country. The HEA would like to see a framework for such a system agreed with the various third level institutions within the next 12 months.

"What we want to do is establish a framework within which the individual institutions would operate and within which the HEA would provide funding," says Lindsay.

"What we are concerned about is that there should be a well developed quality assurance system within each institution." The cost of introducing such a national framework for assessing standards is likely to be in the region of £1 million.

"The problem will always be will people be willing to identify their weaknesses as well as their strengths," says Lindsay. "We want to introduce a mechanism for addressing those weaknesses." But the HEA chairman stressed that there was no question of relating this quality assurance system to the level of funding received by institutions.

"It's not a question of linking funding to quality, or a rating of one against the other," he says.

Others appeared to be less certain, particularly after listening to an opening speech by the Minister for Education, Niamh Bhreathnach. The Minister reiterated the commitment to quality assurance contained in the White Paper but also referred to the recent Universities Bill 1996, specifically the provision for "procedures for evaluating the quality and cost effectiveness of teaching and research carried out in the university".

Cost effectiveness and quality assurance are far from being the same thing and, in political terms, its a short leap from ensuring higher standards to the Unit Cost Mechanism.

Malcolm Byrne, education officer with the Union of Students in Ireland, was one of those who expressed his concern at the Minister's terminology.

"There is a commitment to review in the Universities Bill but it's a review concerning quality and cost effectiveness and this is one of our concerns," he says.

His fear is that, despite claims to the contrary, the HEA may eventually attempt to use quality assessments as a cost cutting exercise. According to USI, the focus should always be on quality. "The emphasis should be on a well rounded education.

Yet there is a general recognition of the need for some system of quality assurance in higher education. The pressure, in part, comes from Europe.

"The background to all this is a question of student mobility," says Dr J. Gay Corr, director of Galway RTC and chairperson of the national committee which was responsible for overseeing the pilot EU quality assurance project in UCD and Limerick RTC.

"The institutions concerned must have trust and confidence that the institutions to which they are sending their students are as good as they are".

Such a common system is still some way away. Only four European countries (France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain) have a comprehensive quality assurance framework in place, a consequence largely of rising student numbers and the increasing cost of third level education to the taxpayer in each of those countries. Ireland has now reached a similar point, with high levels of participation in third level at a cost of around £350 million per annum to the taxpayer.

"I think when you move from an elite system to a massive system of higher education, with much greater emphasis on accountability and the demands of students for greater transparency and accountability, there will be a move towards quality assurance," says Corr.

"To put it very crudely, higher education is costing a lot of money and taxpayers more and more want to be sure they are getting a quality product."

CORR also suggests that students should have considerable input into the quality of courses and that the quality of lecturing should be examined. "The question of the quality of teaching arises, which is not as prevalent here as in Europe. Site surveys would include very intensive evaluation of lecture standards."

"In most surveys that are done of departments, it turns out that students are satisfied with the overall quality of lecturing going on," says Eugene Wall, president of the Irish Federation of University Teachers. "It's largely a myth that there are a whole lot of lecturers out there who can't teach."

An IFUT survey found that 72 per cent of its members supported the need for a more formal system of evaluating the work of universities than is currently the case, although Wall stressed that the organisation had to have meaningful input into the process and had to be satisfied with the validity of the whole exercise.

He also said there was little point in quality assurance systems if the resources were not made available to bring about necessary improvements which resulted tram reviews, including greater resourcing of staff development and training.

IFUT's preferred means of quality assurance was a system similar to that used for the pilot project, with a combined internal and external peer review group comprised of members from similar departments in other colleges. An external panel of reviewers from other countries proved less popular.

Interestingly, a large majority of IFUT members opposed any publication of results and a substantial majority was against the notion that, as the report puts it, "evaluations should have any role in identifying, inter alia, poor quality centres, excellent or poor academics (or).

that evaluation should be used as a means of allocating resources for either good or poor performers."

While this latter view corresponds with that of the HEA, the suggestion that quality evaluations should not be used as a means of rating quality in institutions raises questions about the purpose of the exercise. Problems also remain over what measures will be taken to ensure that institutions meet the standards set in the framework and what to do if they continue not to do so.

Jim Donaldson, commenting on the results of the pilot study, points out that self assessment reports need to be more critical, with institutions required to identify strengths and weaknesses, and that the majority of participating institutions apparently found it difficult to provide some of the necessary data, including grades and participation rates.

How then will the system ensure transparency and openess in quality assessments by institutions? Similarly, if courses or institutions prove to be of inferior quality, should the students who depend on the institutions for their education and the taxpayers funding that education not have a right to know?

"Our concern is that it is only those who are committed to quality who will agree to carry out qualitative evaluations," says USI's Malcolm Byrne.

Byrne supports IFUT's view that the results of assessments should not be made public, since he feels negative reports could impact badly on students and on graduates holding qualifications from the institution in question. He believes the institution involved should be given two to three years to improve its standards before measures are taken against it, including the possibility of publication of results.

It seems likely that some academics and institutions would fight such a measure tooth and nail, arguing that quality assessments should only be used as the basis for internally administered change.

Yet if quality assessment is to be effective, some means of ensuring that institutions adhere to its requirements, and extra funding to enable them to make improvements where necessary, will be required. The whole issue may yet move from being a "live" one to a "hot" one after all.