An Entrepreneurial Approach to Quality Assurance
to Higher Education in Europe

Mihai Korka

At the beginning of a new millennium, society is confronted with the challenges of a few deliberately-induced processes such as globalization and digitalization. Both processes reflect, in their particular way, the increase in productivity, easy access to resources, wider knowledge and the democratic development of humankind.

In essence, globalization aims at ironing out differences inherited from the past and mapping out a common future at world-wide scale. The future of mankind cannot be conceived outside the desire to build bridges between the local needs and the global demands of the global village, as McLuhan put it.

A discussion on globalization involves primarily the interdependence between the economic, technological and ecological fields, as well as the harmonization of instruments assisting the development of international relations worldwide. Globalization does not necessarily mean standardization or uniformity. On the contrary, as a result of combining local and global factors, what looks like a potential advantage in one part (country, region, subcontinent) of the world may look like a potential disadvantage in another part. This diversity of local contexts generates the world's material and spiritual wealth and creates opportunities and motivation for international exchanges.

In the process of promoting globalization, education is looked upon as both one of its factors/instruments and one of its effects (subject to substantial changes as a result of globalization). At the same time the world is clearly dominated by ICT (information and communication technology), and the improvement of human capital and resources through continuous quality education is becoming a key factor in promoting lasting progress. Translating, conveying and using knowledge ensure the increase in productivity and the social progress. At the same time it facilitates a quality personal and professional life capable of contributing to the community development and enhancing social cohesion.

Through their vocation and functions, educational systems and universities in particular are the most qualified to contribute to the development of the new learning and knowledge based society, different from the industrial and postindustrial societies. However, the ability of exploiting the positive effects of globalization and digitalization is not evenly distributed on a global scale. Fierce competition among the present players on a more and more liberalized market is beneficial to the player equipped with better technologies and more dynamic and flexible management; on the other side, the weaker player, with older technologies and a more rigid attitude towards the clients' ever-changing demands gets easily pushed out of the market. This explains the violent reaction of many communities against the consequences of globalization.
Competition is present not only among strong and weak operators, but also among those with equivalent potential. Under these circumstances, quality becomes the main factor of competitiveness, the primary tool of persuading the client to make a decision in favour of one offer at the expense of another.

In the struggle for a privileged position in a world increasingly open to globalization, strategic alliances among competitors and establishing power centres are the safest methods to fight off other competitors. In Europe, the creation of such a power centre has experienced significant progress over the last years. The engine of this process is the European Union. Its objectives include:

• the continuous consolidation of internal structures
• the creation of a unique European space through an open, consistent policy promoted both inside the EU and in its relationship with countries of the European Association of Free Exchange and the Central-European Zone for Free Exchange, with the Baltic states as well as the other candidate countries.

The purpose of this process is to strengthen Europe's position in the global competition. A clear advantage is the fact that Europe is a collection of diverse entities capable of exploiting this advantage when competing with the rest of the world. Moreover, the Single European Zone means a lot more than economic mechanisms and the single currency, the Euro. The European states have become aware that the main asset of the region is its human capital. This is why in view of the new economy dominating the world - the economy of learning and knowledge, education and professional training are becoming political priorities for all states in the region. In addition to that, the summit of the European Council held in Barcelona in March 2002 decided that by 2010 educational and professional training systems in Europe should become "a qualitative point of reference" for the entire world.

Universities play a particular role in accomplishing this goal. They will continue to have a major influence in shaping the European dimension of the contemporary society as a result of their specific formative, innovative, cultural, political functions as well as those referring to professional mobility.

The idea of creating a European Area of Higher Education took shape in 1999, when twenty-nine European ministers of Education (among whom the Romanian Minister of Education) signed the Bologna Declaration. The Declaration represents the commitment of every signatory country to carry out measures of restructuring the higher education system in view of ensuring consistency at European level. The deadline for creating the European Area of Higher Education is the year 2010.

An open European space for higher education would bring along a variety of competitive advantages provided there is respect for the diversity of higher education systems in all European states. The creation of this space involves continuous efforts to eliminate obstacles and develop an educational network meant to stimulate trans-European mobility and strong co-operation among the universities interested.

For this reason, the Bologna Declaration provides a set of specific objectives, the implementation of which represents a turning point in the future development of the European higher education:

• Structuring higher education in all European countries in two main phases, following the pattern undergraduate studies - postgraduate studies, while at the same time observing the particular nature of each field of study in all European countries.
• Setting up a clear system of certification of higher education studies in all participant countries, so that academic documents should be easy to understand and compare at European level.
• Designing of a system of transferable academic credits to be used by each university, in line with ECTS - the European Credit Transfer System.
• Assuring a European dimension of quality in higher education in each country signatory of the Declaration.
• Eliminating the obstacles which still persist in what concerns the mobility of the students, teachers and researchers between European universities.

Academic communities in the European countries had various reactions to the Bologna Declaration; however, they had to admit that through its content, the Declaration is not meant to be a reform imposed on the European states and does not reflect any tendency for standardization at continental level, but rather, it is an invitation to European universities to identify and promote common European values on a global market for higher education. An alternative to the competition from universities outside Europe (the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, etc.) as well as from transnational tertiary education can be provided by working out competitive and attractive academic solutions supported by the creation of the European Area of Higher Education. The premises for the competitiveness of the European offer consist in the diversity and flexibility of the educational programmes and the trans-European mobility. Behind these premises lies a common factor - the quality of the European higher education, and there is a distinctive need for a clear, transparent mechanism of quality assurance. The summit of the European higher education institutions in Salamanca, in March 2001, emphasized the need for quality assurance in each university and the necessity to develop mutual trust between European universities as regards internal quality assurance. Equally important is the need for developing formative programmes leading to qualifications acknowledged on the European labour market.

Many European traditional higher education institutions pride themselves on offering high-quality programmes and quality is guaranteed by input factors (teaching staff, financial resources, equipment) and by reliable marking criteria traditionaly used by teachers in examining the students. The conservative spirit of these academic communities often rejects the very idea of evaluating the quality of their formative programmes. Other higher education institutions carefully supervise the quality of the output in order to assess the quality of the educational programmes on offer. Among the criteria used are the quick rhythm in which graduates manage to find employment and the stability of their employment in their first job.

So far, only a small number of universities have understood that in such a dynamic society as ours, an educational institution has to be run like a business operating in a market strongly affected by competition. Consistent identification of the qualification needs on the labour market and good knowledge of the expectations of the different stakeholders supporting the universities (employers in the public and private sectors as well as students and their families) facilitate the design of an appropriate and diversified educational offer.

The carrying out of these educational programmes is based on the institutional strategic plan (in which input factors are mobilized and exploited), and their competitiveness originates in the quality culture developed by each university. Every member of staff needs to be certain that individual performance is important to the quality of the final product; every member of staff has to benefit from the moral and material motivation when performing to the highest level in his/her position. To put it differently, the management system of a university, just like that of a company, is focused on quality and the involvement of all the members of the academic community with a view to ensuring long-term success through customer satisfaction; benefits are thus obtained both for the university and for society in general (text adopted by SR ISO 8402).

Consequently, total quality management in a university involves carefully considering each component of the activity in an academic community (besides initial education and training). Assuring the graduates' quality performance is only possible if modern and flexible educational programmes are backed by

• sustained research and development activities,
• a stable relationship of the university with the future employers of graduates,
• systematic contacts with institutional partners and competitors inside the country and abroad,
• efficient academic, financial and logistic management, etc.

Every task performed by the university needs to be replicated by internal, transparent mechanisms of self-evaluation concerning the quality of the respective activity. The self-evaluation process involves not only the teaching staff but also the students, researchers, administrative staff, employers and graduates in the first 3-5 years after graduation. Clear, quantifiable outcomes of the internal process of self-evaluation of each type of activity carried out in every department of the university can contribute to external quality accreditation by national authorities or by European institutions.

External quality accreditation has two clear aims:

• it facilitates the guidance of local and foreign future beneficiaries on the higher education market which is characterized by an increasingly varied educational offer
• it enhances mutual trust among universities involved in trans-European mobility.

It is easy to notice that this entrepreneurial approach to quality in higher education relies heavily on the pragmatic character of the activities carried out by universities, the rational allocation of human, financial and material resources and their effective use. Quality assurance does not only satisfy the university clients, but makes possible the integration of the university in its wider environment, as well as its participation in international academic networks, with priorities in the pan-European networks.

Bibliography

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Korka, Mihai: Reforma învatamântului de la optiuni strategice la actiune. Editura Punct, Bucuresti, 2000

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*** Outline of a Proposal for a Project on the Quality Assurance Aspects of New Forms of Higher Education. ENQA workshop on Quality Assurance in Higher Education, 28-29 March, 2000.