Beyound The Quality Paradigm: Consequences And Possible Remedial Actions

6.1. Any number of bad decisions may be taken and rationalized under the umbrella of quality of education paradigm

Case study a: Retiring teaching staff over 65 (for better quality of education)

As a consequence of the Law of National Education being passed by the Parliament in 2011 (Parlamentul Romaniei, 2011), universities had to abruptly retire professors over 65.

A deficit of 10 to 20% of teaching staff appeared practically overnight and consequently, the danger of not meeting the standards of quality assurance agency regarding the teaching positions a professor was allowed to cover.

The Senates of the universities reacted by raising the teaching loads for one teaching position. For example, the current teaching load for a professor position at Spiru Haret University is 12 hours/week. The combination of higher teaching loads and stagnant salaries led to a de facto decrease of per hour salaries.

Case study b: The lowest teaching degree in Higher Education requires a Doctor diploma (for better quality of education)

Ever since the communist regime universities, the lowest teaching position, namely Assistant, acted as an exceptionally powerful motivation factor for students to work hard, as those with best grades and scientific activity could have been kept on after graduation, as Assistants, and start a Higher Education teaching career.

As a consequence of the same 2011 National Education law provisions, an Assistant cannot be hired unless he/she possessed a doctor’s Diploma. The Assistants already under contract were given a period of time to either graduate doctoral studies or enrol in such a program and graduate.

However, for various reasons, not all assistants managed to complete their doctoral studies in time.

For example, just in the Psychology and Education Department Bucharest of Spiru Haret University, eight employment contracts had to be terminated for this reason. Out of the eight ex assistants, three were enrolled in doctoral programs at one of the Sorbonne universities. Needless to say, in any such young ex member of faculty, universities had invested resources, according to teaching needs and career development plans.

6.2. Remedial actions necessary

Using a better construct for the quality of education

The current construct used by domestic quality assurance agencies (one for Pre-university and one for Higher Education) uses meeting the “expectations” of beneficiaries as the key component (ARACIS, 2006), while most of the international and domestic reports and studies on the quality of education prefer to use the concept “needs” (OECD, 1989; Lisievici, 1997; Lisievici, 2009). The definition associates the quality in education with meeting the ”expectations” of the ”beneficiaries” and the ”quality standards”. It

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goes on to stipulate that there are ”direct” beneficiaries, like the persons enrolled in education programmes, and ”indirect” beneficiaries, like employers, employees, families of beneficiaries and, to a larger extent, the

”whole society”.

The needs of education providers are completely disregarded. The methodological documents of quality assurance agencies (ARACIS, 2006) contain numerous suggestions that quality of education can be rigorously measured.

The consequence is that the assessment reports go beyond descriptions and suggestions and can be used as basis for granting or denying government funding, making classifications or even dissolution of institutions.

We submit the following construct for the quality of education as being far more adequate: The quality of education is a mixture of realities, perceptions and attitudes related to the way in which the education providers and beneficiaries behave in order to learn about and meet their respective needs, both the ones they are aware of and the ones they are not aware of. As such it cannot be measured, but it can be described and used to inform suggestions for improvement.

This construct has a series of merits as opposed to the currently used one.

First, it takes into account “the forgotten side of quality” (Lisievici, 2015), namely, the needs of education providers.

Secondly, it accommodates the idea that for an education provider it is more important to meet the needs of its particular beneficiaries than some general standards.

It also clarifies the idea that it is impossible to make decisions leading to quality without taking into account the particular beneficiaries of and education provider, or the human, material and financial resources of a particular education provider.

 Restructuring the mission and the scope of activity for the quality assurance institutions

According to the new construct for quality of education, both quality assurance agencies (for preuniversity institutions and for Higher education) should expand their scrutiny to the county and municipal inspectorates for education and also, to the Ministry of Education.

They should concentrate on their ability to provide adequate funding for institutions, on strategies and decision making, on fairness of treatment of state versus private education providers, on promoting decentralization, institutional independence and intellectual freedom.

They should also concentrate on the quality, stability, consistence and conciseness of regulations, on their connection with the European education cultural space.

There is also necessary to renounce the current orientation towards allocating quality diagnostics like “High Trustworthiness”, “Trustworthiness”, “Limited Trustworthiness” and move towards descriptive reports, including recommendations.

 Reshaping the standards and procedures and for both visits of teams from quality assurance agencies and for decision making

Currently, the self-assessment report the education providers have to prepare before the visit from the quality assurance agency may be have about 1500 pages, out of which more than 90% consist of

“Annexes”. Compiling ownership documents for the institution’s buildings or the surfaces of its different facilities is widely known as being both time-consuming and frustrating.

In order to drastically reduce the volume of documentation needed, a standard for the selfassessment report should be set to a maximum of 100 pages, including Annexes. This remedial action addresses the finding that writing documentations and reports for quality assessment agencies may occupy up to 60% of job related time (Lisievici, Ticuşan, & Todor, 2013).

Stability and predictability should also be observed.

The current situation is that the format of “Discipline charts” is being changed almost every year, as well as the classification of disciples between Fundamental, Domain or Specialization. As a consequence, education providers have to frequently modify curricula and calculation of percentages of different types of components.

Professional association should be called to suggest requirements for curricula and the number of suggested components should not exceed 50% of the total. The current standards are so specific that little room is left for the institutions to take into account both the needs of the students and the teaching resources they have.

Decision making process should also be revised. Currently the reports of the visiting teams are being used as a basis for decisions made by the boards of quality assurance agencies. Basically decisions are being made not by individuals who actually visited the institutions.

Decision making processes should include recommendations for resources allocation. For example, private universities, for financial reasons, are frequently in crisis of support staff and divert to faculty various repetitive tasks associate with preparing reports for quality assurance agencies. In such situations, recommendations for government funding should be made, i.e. to allocate funding for support staff.