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THE 2012 APQN CONFERENCE AND AGM

Dr. Rath ChhangDirector, Dept. Postgraduate ProgramsAccreditation Committee of Cambodia

“Implementation of a Quality Assurance System in a University: A Case study of a university in Cambodia”

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1. Introduction: Context of the University

• Assurance is still a relatively new concept in the Cambodian higher education context;

• A formal quality assurance framework at an institutional level does not yet exist, and a quality culture still does not exist in each academic staff’s mindset;

• The majority of universities do not have quality management frameworks in place;

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Introduction (Cont)

• Data is non-existent as are information systems needed for decision making and planning, leading to ad hoc, rather than evidence-based, decisions;

• Developing a sound and attractive plan with relative ease, but needing to acknowledge that the implementation of the plan may be another issue and problematic;

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Introduction (Cont)

• the University is not able to supply sufficient resources to support the plan;

• The key question is whether the University has enough competent leaders to lead teachers and staff to achieve this plan and ensure that the leaders have sufficient ability and resources to involve all educational stakeholders in participating in the implementation of the plan;

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Introduction (Cont)

• Many researchers suggested quality assurance in universities in developing countries should not be too much ambitious; some countries have introduced it, as it is fashionable, or there are some pressures from international or local donors or funding agencies (Lim 2001).

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Introduction (Cont)

Human Resources• Like other public HEIs, the University’s faculty

members were lost and killed under the Khmer Rouge;

• Operations under the management of a handful of teachers. These faculty have passed their knowledge, institutional culture, management style, academic structures, and the like, to new generations of faculty members;

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• Most of the faculty members graduated from Vietnam, the former Soviet Union, other Eastern-bloc nations and local universities. A small number graduated from different countries such as the United States, Australia, Japan, and Asian countries, but the university cannot retain them because of low salaries.

• staff qualifications are not comparable to the Minimum Standards set by the AUN-QA.

• Lack of autonomy to recruit its own staff, and it is not able to apply any sanctions on those who perform poorly or lack commitment;

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• No difference between those who are strongly committed to, and actively involved, and those who are not, leading to low morale and motivation amongst staff;

• Some of the faculty may be employed to teach at other institutions on a part-time basis, or work for private companies and NGOs;

• it is hard for the University to retain experienced and qualified teaching staff, especially those who graduated from overseas;

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Teaching and Research Despite teaching, research, and community service being the core ‘businesses’ of the University, the research and community service activities are less likely to be undertaken for a numbers of reasons:• ‘moonlight’, or teach more hours, either within

the institution, or outside the institution, leading to a lack of time to do research;

• No package of research funding;

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• Research skills and the experience of the faculty members are limited;

• If any faculty member wants to conduct research, they have to bid for research grants from external funding agencies or donors, which is highly scrutinised and involves a bureaucratic process;

• Not able to provide internet, inadequate office space for teachers;

• Notwithstanding these barriers, some faculties have expressed enthusiasm for undertaking research.

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2. Data collection and analysis

• On-on-one interviews with key policy makers at ministerial levels and in the university;

• Focus group discussion with the faculty members

Data Analysis• Data was analyzed by coding into themes; • Two main kinds of codes: descriptive and

inferential codes (Punch 2005)

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3. Findings and discussions

To implement the quality management system effectively in daily practise, the university should employ the following activities:3.1. Elucidation of the system: • There was a need for the leaders of the university, in

collaboration with the Internal QA Unit, to explain the benefits of the system to all staff.

• training about how to utilise it, especially department heads, because they would take the lead in conducting self-assessment or other quality activities.

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• an information dissemination system must be widely disseminated and publicly available to all staff. However, this system did not exist at the University, leading to poor communication and information sharing within the institution.

3.2. Clear roles and responsibilities – job descriptions• when staff and leaders carried out the set roles and

responsibilities as a norm, their routine participation and involvement would increase;

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• staff just did their routine jobs without there being a clear and unambiguous structure, leading to role and responsibility confusion and duplication;

3.3. Good governance – accountability and transparency

• the university had poor governance which made people lack motivation to actively participate in the quality management process of the university

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• Transparency in financial management was a sensitive issue. Information about financial management was considered confidential. Budgetary plans of the university were not discussed openly

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3.4. Participation and less external intrusiveness• Policy and mechanism to encourage staff participation. In the

Cambodian culture, people always looked to a leader as an example; if the leader was passive then so were they;

• To encourage participation by staff, their voices should be heard in the quality management process rather than the imposition of power from the top leaders;

• use the collegial method to encourage internal participation rather than external intrusiveness from external bodies;

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• the internal participation played an important role in contributing to the success of the quality implementation, but the external quality assurance agencies also played a significant role in contributing to quality improvement;

• A collaboration between an institution and the external quality authorities;

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3.5 Seeking funding from external funding agencies • the university was not able to stand on its own

feet due to scarce resources. There was a need to seek extra funding support to kick start the implementation of any quality management system; if there was no first step, there would be no second step.

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• A self-assessment report was important to attract financial support from funding agencies;

• a quality tracking system and quality measurement needed to be established

3.6 Autonomy • Professional autonomy and academic freedom

were limited

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• MoEYS itself was not sure of what constituted autonomy, allowing some institutions to run their programs in the same mode as being used in businesses and enterprises;

• Globalisation had an enormous impact on HE, leading to an increased development of technology;

• The government was not able to cope with the swift changes, so universities must be given autonomy so that they were flexible enough to cope.

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• public universities that were able to generate more incomes through charging student fees, transfer their status to a public administration institution (PAI) and run their programs in the same way as business enterprises;

• HEIs that offered courses less popular in the job market were reluctant to change their status to PAI, they were concerned that they were not able to support their operations by themselves;

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3.7 ‘Carrot and Stick’ policy • The government should develop a financial

support scheme given to universities based on good performance;

• This measure allows for more competition between HEIs.

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3.8 Leadership• The top management should take the lead in

the development of the quality management system and its implementation because politics played a significant role in the higher education sector in Cambodia;

• a top-down approach to decision-making is embedded in the Cambodian culture;

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• The top management of an institution must take the responsibility;

• The university was a public institution so there was inevitably an influence and intervention from the central government agency;

• A leadership role model was important in the Cambodian culture because it had an enormous impact on followers’ behaviours and perceptions;

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• The leaders must perform their model roles in an active and decisive manner as an example for their subordinates;

• Although participation and involvement of all levels of staff were key factors contributing to the success of the implementation, the initiative and guidance must be started from the top management;

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• Although a top-down approach to quality assurance played a powerful role in keeping the ball rolling, staff empowerment also played a critical role in making the system move forward. The tension between top-down procedures and staff empowerment must be balanced, allowing for a compromise acceptable to both parties.

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• each department must take responsibility for the development of a quality management framework for their own department, as they had an explicit idea of what they wanted to do and how to achieve it. When each individual department’s framework was in place, there was a need for incorporation of the collected frameworks into an institutional framework;

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• Staff should be delegated to do the work, but there was a need for close monitoring and supervision by the department leaders over their staff to ensure that they worked effectively;

• IQA Unit or quality assurance committee must perform a coordinating role in liaising with all departments and sections of the university to develop a quality management system with endorsement and close scrutiny from the leaders

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• IQA Unit should be officially recognised by the MoEYS as an office of the university so that it had power or authority to do the work in an effective fashion;

• As politics played an influential role in the higher education sector, so HEIs tended to wait for the green light from the central agencies before they decided to do anything related to educational reform;

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• Consistency between the IQA system and the ACC standards;

• Universities were compelled to involve the ACC and other agencies concerned in the development of their internal quality management frameworks.

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Conclusion

Establishing quality culture within the university requires policy makers at both an institutional and systemic level to address a number of major issues.

• good governance - transparency and accountability;

• institutional autonomy;• a carrot and stick’s policy;

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• institutional leaders’ initiatives with participation and involvement of all levels of staff and less external intrusiveness;

• Elucidation of the system