From Metrics to Knowledge? Quality Assessment in Higher Education

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12048
• Published date: 01 February 2015
• Date: 01 February 2015
• Author: Inger Johanne Pettersen

Financial Accountability & Management, 31(1), February 2015, 0267-4424

From Metrics to Knowledge? Quality

Assessment in Higher Education

INGER JOHANNE PETTERSEN∗

Abstract: The qualification frameworks in higher education organizations have

initiated standardization across countries. These reform initiatives build on manage-

rial logics from the business world, which create dilemmas as academic institutions

have been governed by professional academic logics. Institutions have thus moved

from homogeneity towards heterogeneity and multiple institutional logics. How has

the concept of students’ learning outcomes been turned into practice? The study

is based on the construction of the Norwegian Quality Assessment System and the

Swedish development of the External Program Quality Model. These systems are

not addressing the students’ learning outcomes, but focus on input and processes.

Further, discursive processes enhance multiple logics in the institutions.

Keywords: quality assessment, higher educations, learning outcomes, discursive

processes

INTRODUCTION

The qualification frameworks (Bologna Working Group, 2005) and the following

emphasis on students’ learning outcomes (OECD, 2009) in higher education

organizations are based on the instrumental ideas to enhance transparency,

develop quality and create more efficient organizations. This standardization

of reports and the new evaluation-strategies imposed into these academic

institutions build on managerial logics from the business world. These reforms

create dilemmas, as academic institutions have traditionally been governed by

professional academic logics, known as the ‘Humboltian idea’, where education

is entirely considered as the discursive process between teachers and students.

This shift in governance practices has moved institutions from more or

∗The author is a Professor at Trondheim Business School, Norway. An earlier version of

this paper was presented to the 7th International Conference on Accounting, Auditing and

Management in Public Sector Reforms, Milan, Italy, 4–6 September, 2012.

Address for correspondence: Inger Johanne Pettersen, Trondheim Business School, 7004

Trondheim, Norway.

e-mail: Inger.Johanne.Pettersen@hist.no

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less homogeneity (professional/academic governance) towards heterogeneity

(hybridity) based on multiple institutional logics.

This paper addresses how performance measures are transformed by

professional knowledge into metrics derived from managerial logics and how this

transformation enables multiple logics. The findings indicate that the quality

and relevance of the measures rely on these discursive processes taking place

between the professionals and the managers. If these measures are not built on

such processes, their validity will be questioned by the professionals, and the

relevance of this information to guide decisions and actions is reduced. In the

end, decision makers might decouple from measures such as learning outcomes,

or even worse, ill-defined measures can motivate unintended behaviour.

This transformation from professional knowledge to measures is studied here

by the concept of students’ learning outcomes and how it has been turned into

practice on national levels. In order to address this question, the translation

processes in two countries, Sweden and Norway, are compared to describe how

common standards advocated by the OECD are interpreted and implemented

diversely at national levels. These two Scandinavian countries were chosen as

they have comparable higher education institutions and contexts, but they

have also addressed the reforms very differently. The empirical data in this

paper are gathered from the construction of the Norwegian Quality Assessment

System and the Swedish development of the External Program Quality

Model. Specifically, the focus is put on how governance systems (Quality

Assessment Systems) are developed from ideas into accounts. The empirical

data contributes to the management literature, as it shows how multiple logics

are developed to become more relevant for guiding decisions in higher education.

In the next section, a review of relevant literature will be given to describe

the higher education institutions as the context of this study. The theoretical

perspectives will be developed based on normative and descriptive approaches.

Further, we summarize perspectives on educational economics regarding the

measurement of educational output and outcome and the design of performance

measures as accounting information. In the descriptive approach, we build on

institutional theory, including the emphasis of multiple institutional logics and

the importance of discursive processes.

HIGHER EDUCATION AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

The Attainment of Learning Aims

Learning has always been the goal of educational programmes. Whilst certain

learning outcomes formerly were taken more or less for granted, learning

outcomes are now developed into quality indicators to measure outcome and

to evaluate programmes. These changes in the roles of measurement are driven

by the increasing use of judgemental forms of performance measures (ter

Bogt and Scapens, 2012; Parker, 2012; and Broadbent and Guthrie, 2008). The

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