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Introduction

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Public Policy for Academic Quality

Part of the book series: Higher Education Dynamics ((HEDY,volume 30))

Abstract

The impact of globalization and massification has altered radically the traditional relationship between the state and institutions of higher education. As a consequence the leading nations are experimenting with new instruments for academic quality assurance. We have selected fourteen innovative policy instruments designed to help assure academic standards that will be analyzed in depth in this volume. In the introductory chapter we present the cases and we develop a framework for systematizing and analyzing the instruments. We argue that quality assurance instruments can be based on professional self-regulation, market competition, or state control and each of these mechanisms represents a possible approach to the public regulation of academic quality. The chapter also introduces the perspective of “public interest” that will be followed throughout the book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Commenting on the contribution that disciplinary fragmentation makes to the complexity of higher education systems, Clark (1996) observed, “in mathematics, 200,00 new theorems are published each year, periodicals exceed 1,000, and review journals have developed classification scheme that includes over 4,500 subtopics arranged under 62 major topic areas. In history, the output of literature in the two decades of 1960–1980 was apparently equal in magnitude to all that was published from the time of the Greek historian Thucydides in the fourth century B.C. to the year 1960. In psychology, 45 major specialties appear in the structure of the American Psychological Association, and one of these specialties, social psychology, reports that it is now comprised of 17 subfields .... In the mid-1990s, those who track the field of chemistry were reporting that ‘more articles on chemistry have been published in the past 2 years than throughout history before 1900.’ Chemical Abstracts took 31 years to publish its first million abstracts, 18 years for its second million, and less than 2 years for its most recent million. An exponential growth of about 4–8% annually, with a doubling period of 10–15 years, is now seen as characteristic of most branches of science” (pp. 421–422).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    David D. Dill

  2. Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Maarja Beerkens

Authors
  1. David D. Dill
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  2. Maarja Beerkens
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Correspondence to David D. Dill .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 27599-7090, North Carolina, USA

    David D. Dill

  2. CHEPS, University of Twente, Enschede, 7500 AE, Netherlands

    Maarja Beerkens

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Dill, D.D., Beerkens, M. (2010). Introduction. In: Dill, D., Beerkens, M. (eds) Public Policy for Academic Quality. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 30. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3754-1_1

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