UK University Quality Assurance

¶ … university quality assurance in the UK

What were the objectives of the British government in passing the Further & Higher Education Act in 1992 and in establishing the Quality Assurance Agency five years later?

The objectives of the British government in passing the Further & Higher Education Act in 1992 were to dissolve the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC) and the Universities Funding Council (UFC). In turn, the Act instigated the creation of new institutions that would provide funds and capital to all higher education institutions in their corresponding expanses within the United Kingdom. For instance, with regard to Scotland, there is the Scottish SHEFC (Higher Education Funding Council), for England, there is the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England); while on the other hand, for Wales, there is the HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council for Wales) (The UK Academic Infrastructure, n.d). The main objective of the British Government in establishing the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education was to make available an incorporated quality assurance service for higher education in the United Kingdom. This was established five years later. In particular, the Quality Assurance Agency is an autonomous and self-governing establishment that is financed and supported by contributions from universities and institutions of higher education, and by means of agreements with the main higher education funding councils (Brown, 2004; Stiles, 2004).

The Further and Higher Education Act made it mandatory for the Funding Councils to ensure that they make provision and delivery for evaluating the quality of education that is being rendered in institutions whose activities they facilitate and fund. With this regard, this Act necessitated them to set up a committee that was referred to as the Quality Assessment Committee, with the main role of providing them with advice on how to implement their duties. There was a great issue with respect to quality assurance, and therefore, the enactment of this act was to highlight the purposes, which were to assess it and the party or individuals responsible for such undertakings (Brown, 2004).

2. To what extent have these objectives been fulfilled?

The aforementioned objectives have been fulfilled to a significant extent. For instance, all of the bodies and institutions created in the Further & Higher Education Act in 1992 have provided capital to all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom up until the present day. One of the key objectives of higher education instituted by the British Government is to increase and broaden the level of participation. This objective has been largely attained as it has been possible to not only promote, but at the same time also protect fair accessibility to higher education for groups that are under-represented in the United Kingdom. More so, this is with respect to the fact that in 2007, the government introduced variable tuition fees into the system so as to enable more and more individual to gain access and for further education to be attained expansively.