External and Internal Quality Assurance in Tertiary Education in Asia Pacific : Efficiency, Relevance and Transformative Power of QA

Tertiary education has seen substantial transformations globally over the last twenty years, particularly in the expansion of the number of institutions and student enrolment. Due to severe global competition for talent and resources in the era of tertiary education massification, tertiary education institutions (TEI s) are expected to respond to these ‘new’ challenges. Following this expanding mission of tertiary education, there is an increasing demand for HEI s to demonstrate their accountability, value for money and relevance to global and local contexts (Loukkola et al., 2020; Kaiser et al., 2022). The 2020 pandemic disruption exerted external influences in tertiary education and elicited widespread attention over the quality of new providers and non-formal education, such as short learning programmes, third mission, social impacts, sustainability, etc. (Mok et al., 2021; Hou et al., 2022).

Concurrently, “efficiency”, “relevance” and “transformative power” are considered as the three core components that quality assurance bodies and accreditors should be equipped with, in order to meet unexpected crises and challenges in a fast-changing society (INQAAHE, 2022). Most importantly, quality assurance (QA) should have a transformative power to meet social demand and to present impact. According to Harvey (2004), “efficiency” is defined as the extent to which an activity achieves its goal whilst minimising resource usage, which is often associated with value for money. Regarding relevance, OECD (2019) defines it as the extent to which the aid activity is suited to the priorities and policies of the target group, recipient and donor. Transformation involves a ‘qualitative change’ from one state to another (Harvey & Green, 1993). It entails changes within quality assurance bodies so that it is better equipped to transform TEI s under its purview transforming learning, research, services to society (Harvey & Knight, 1996). In particular, organisations should have capacities and resilience to respond to the crises or in any unexpected circumstances.

Thus, quality assurance bodies (EQAB s) and accreditors cannot stop evolving in order to “meet both the changing expectations of universities, governments, and students” (Matear, 2018, p.1). Typically, QA in tertiary education operates on a dual axis of internal and external mechanisms. Internal quality assurance (IQA) facilitates institutions to introspectively review their quality policy, processes, standards and outcomes (Harvey, 2004; Stensaker et al., 2011; INQAAHE, 2018). External quality assurance (EQA), in contrast, requires a third-party assessment, often at the behest of governing bodies, to affirm if these institutions adhere to a set of established educational standards (Martin & Stella, 2007; Karakhanyan & Stensaker, 2020; Kaiser et al., 2022).