Through Deming's Eyes: a cross‐national analysis of quality assurance policies in higher education

TLDR

Academic programme quality improvement in the US, UK, and Netherlands has followed three approaches—competitive markets, incentives, and professional self‑regulation—shaped by information economics and assumptions of disciplinary cohesion. This paper critiques the strengths and weaknesses of those approaches through the lens of W. Edwards Deming’s quality management. The authors examine how quality assurance activities in the three countries might build social capital within and between institutions.

Abstract

Abstract Efforts to improve the quality of academic programmes in the US, the UK, and the Netherlands have followed three general approaches: the logic of competitive markets, the application of incentives, and the process of professional self‐regulation. The first two approaches have been much influenced by the field of information economics, particularly the concept of insufficient information and the principal‐agent model. Professional self‐regulation has relied on the critical assumption of the existence of cohesion in academic disciplines and fields. The strengths and weaknesses of these three approaches for improving academic quality are critiqued through the lens of the work of W. Edwards Deming, a leading American thinker on quality management. The analysis suggests that quality assurance policies will likely make the most important contribution by fostering the development of 'social capital', both within and between academic institutions. How this might be accomplished is explored through an examination of quality assurance activities in the three countries.