Abstract
Over the past 30 years, quality assurance in higher education has rapidly developed on a global scale and become a widely studied research topic. However, a good deal of the research on this issue has been subject to an instrumental bias. The attention given to the technical features and expected results of quality assurance has overshadowed the analysis of its political and symbolic dimensions. This article argues that the political sociology of public policy instrumentation—a conceptual framework that foregrounds the technical and the social nature of public policy instruments, as well as their unexpected effects—can bring the instrumental, political, and symbolic dimensions of quality assurance together. To support this claim, the article presents a comparative analysis of the Chilean and Colombian systems of quality assurance in higher education, two cases that might seem analogous at first glance due to their instrumental commonalities but reflect contrasting approaches to quality: a flexible and an excellence-oriented approach, respectively.
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Notes
In Colombia, a third instrument of QA was introduced in 2003: The Higher Education Quality Tests (Exámenes de Calidad de la Educación Superior, ECAES) are voluntary examinations of undergraduate learning outcomes. They have been mandatory for graduation since 2010 and are now known as SABER PRO exams.
In Chile, the control of minimum quality standards was initially called accreditation. However, when the accreditation for undergraduate programs was created in 1999, this instrument became known as licenciamiento (Comisión Nacional de Acreditación 2007). Although the licenciamiento is presented as a licensing process (see, among others, OECD 2013), which is the “culling step” (Kells 1999, 217) where the government decides whether a given institution has the right to exist, it is not really a licensing scheme because it is not cyclically run and only involves new private institutions.
In Chile, accreditations for programs and institutions were created in 1999 and 2003, respectively.
In Colombia, accreditations for programs and institutions were created in 1996 and 2003, respectively.
With the approval of the reform of higher education contained in Law 21091 of 2018, accreditation in Chile has been mandatory since 1 January 2020.
These agencies are no longer part of the Chilean system of QA.
Colombia’s CNA does not have its own budget, so it is financially dependent on the Ministry of Education.
Available on: https://www.bcn.cl/leychile/navegar?idNorma=255323
Available on: https://www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=239034
Available on: https://www.cna.gov.co/1741/articles-186370_ley_3092.pdf
Official data is available on: https://hecaa.mineducacion.gov.co/consultaspublicas/programas
Being enrolled at an accredited institution is the principal condition to access the public programs created since 2014 to provide financial aid to students: Ser Pilo Paga, Generación E, ICETEX student loans.
By September 2020, Gouverner par les instruments, the book in which Pierre Lascoumes and Patrick Le Galès laid the foundations of this conceptual framework, had been cited more than 2,000 times, according to Google Scholar.
The group of French researchers specializing in higher education policy who use PPI includes but is not limited to Clémentine Gozlan, Christine Musselin, Jérôme Aust, and Cécile Crespy.
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Duque, J.F. A comparative analysis of the Chilean and Colombian systems of quality assurance in higher education. High Educ 82, 669–683 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00633-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00633-z