Description
As China pursues the Double First-Class Initiative and faces challenges of quality assurance (QA) for distance education after the pandemic, Sino-foreign cooperative programs have become a focal point for quality improvement and enhancement under the glonacal context. This study follows Dunn’s (2015) policy analysis model and initiatively sorts out 25 preferred policy documents from 1978 to 2023, with a new expected outcome that orients strengthening discipline development and management reform within internal quality assurance (IQA) and promoting China's global educational influence as an education hub under the 'Belt and Road initiative'. The research question is to monitor QA policy implementation via observed outcomes to investigate the extent to which policies for cooperative programs are effective, satisfactory and equitable under Dunn's multi-rationality criteria for policy evaluation, which provides theoretical and practical guidance for policy interpretation and analysis for the QA system. Using primary and secondary evaluation indicators of the Ministry of Education for cooperative programs and Dunn's criteria for policy implementation, results show that pertinent QA problems：1) the prevalence of profit-driven 'chain store' programs that lack inter-disciplinary integration and efficient program management by higher education institutions (HEIs); 2) the dominance of government-led external quality assurance resulting in superficial IQA and low societal satisfaction; and, 3) unequal distribution and allocation of resources. Accordingly, findings carry substantial policy implications from comparative perspectives for future agendas: setting incremental goals for HEIs' positioning and governance satisfying adequacy criteria, optimizing policy content and adopting cumulative policy approaches for equity and responsiveness.| Period | 9 May 2023 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Symposium on Internationalisation and Quality Management in Higher Education 2023 |
| Event type | Symposium |
| Organisers | Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership (APHERP), Institute of Policy Studies, College of Education, National Chengchi University, Deakin University |