Quality Assurance and Governance of HigherEducation Institutions in Japan

Syun Tutiya

The National Institution for Academic Degrees and Quality Enhancementof Higher Education

November 18, 2016Higher Education Institutional Research and Quality

Assurance, Taipei

Outline

1 From NIAD-UE to NIAD-QE

2 Joint degree regulation

3 CAMPUS Asia, second monitoring finished with firstmode ending

4 AQAN+3 scheme & “checklist” for “ReinventingJapan”

5 Forum on academic integrity

6 Foci in Japan’s CEA reform in 2016, targetting 2018

• Internal quality assurance• (Expected) Learning outcomes and “Curriculum

Policy”• Management and institutional research for quality

enhancement of teaching and learning

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Name change with “Quality” added

• National Institution for Academic Degree and UniversityEvaluation (NIAD-UE), formally us, and

Center for National University Finance andManagement (CUFM)

Merging, as of April 1, 2016, into the NationalInstitution for Academic Degrees and QualityEnhancement of Higher Education (NIAD-QE),though the Japanese is “大学改革支援”?, andincidentally,

• Japan has about 780 “universities,” with 86 national,90 “public” and private universities. There are 300undergraduate and graduate students, with about 180thousand faculty members. Progression rate fromsecondary to higher education is about 60%.

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Joint degree regulation introduced in 2014

• An addition to the Standards for the Estblishment ofUniversity in November, 2014 makes it possible forJapanese universities to start a international jointprogram which awards single degrees on the basis ofmutual agreement between the Japanese and offshoreuniversities

• So far Japan’s Ministry has approved no less than fourPhD programs, including those between Nagoya & theUniversity of Adelaide in medicine, between TokyoMedical and Dental & the University of Chile inmedicine, Tokyo Medical and Dental & ChulalongkornUniversity in dentistry and Nagoya Univ. & theUniversity of Edinburgh in science

• Such programs are subject to Japan’s CEA review asprograms in Japanese higher education institutions

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CAMPUS Asia moving on

•‘ CAMPUS Asia ’is a governments-led initiative thataims to strengthen exchange and cooperation withquality assurance among universities in Japan, Chinaand Korea, which supported ten trilateral consortialjoint programs 2010–2015

• HEEC, KCUE and NIAD-UE agreed to jointly“monitor” the programs to identify and underscoregood practices and draw up joint guidelines forinternational cooperative education

• The first, interim, independent though coordinatedreview of all programs in 2013 and the second, jointmonitoring in 2015

• 9 more with CJK and new 8 with ASEANuniversities(http : //www .jsps.go.jp/j −tenkairyoku/data/shinsa/h28/e h28 tenkai kekka.pdf )

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Lessons from the past monitorings

• Good practices so far identified include measures toovercome language barriers, the unification of CMS, adetailed correspondance table between two curriculathat has helped students avoid duplicate learning

• Compilation of “Guidelines” for internationalcollaborative programs

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Web and Book

• Development of a “Checklist” for internationalcollaborative programs

• NIAD-QE’s attempt to provide the checklist forprospective providers in the incentive funding forinternational commitments, with “partners” beingsought for by Kim SoungHee, NIAD-QE

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Beyond North East Asia

• Upon the suggestion by the Working Group on Mobility ofHigher Education and Ensuring Quality Assurance of HigherEducation among ASEAN Plus Three Countries underASEAN Plus Three Education Ministers Meeting, ASEANPlus Three Quality Assurance Expert Meeting wasstarted to serve as a platform for free discussion andexchange of views among QAAs, especially on how agenciescan contribute to the enhancement of student mobilityprograms in the region.

• Three past meetings in Hanoi, March 2014, in Bali, October2014, and in Manila, September 2015, with

• An online survey in 2014 on quality assurance concerningstudent mobility, whose results essentially show that we arenot ready yet.

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Ethics in the context of higher education

• NIAD-UE University Quality Assurance Forum 2015held around the theme of “Quality of Knowledge fromthe Perspective of Academic Integrity”

• The responsibility of university with respect toprotecting the value of knowledge autonomously ingeneral as well

• Invited speakers including:▶ Bruce Macfarlane (Professor of Higher Education,

Southampton Education School, University ofSouthampton)

▶ Tim Burton (Head of Standards, Quality and

Enhancement, Quality Assurance Agency for Higher

Education (QAA) )

• Tripartite issues: “Campus rules” and “In locoparentis”; research misconduct like FFP; and ethicaldimensions of quality assurance, or quality assurance ofquality assurance

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CEA retouch, effective 2018

• Certified Evaluation and Accreditation(CEA) is themandatory system of quality assurance of higher educationinstitutions in Japan, starting in 2004

• No changes to the relevant laws, yet

• a few changes to the Ministry’s rules and regulations inMarch, 2016:

1 For each HEI to establish and publish principles asregards graduation, curriculum and admissions

2 For each QAA to set out standards for the evaluation ofthose principles

3 For each QAA to focus specifically on the institution’sinternal quality assurance

4 For each QAA to assess itself and publish the results,evaluate the improvements suggested by it upon theHEI’s request, include relevant stakeholders in theinterviewees

• NIAD-QE takes the changes seriously, but nothing is final yet11/18/2016 8/13

Specification of expected learning outcomes

• Historical backgrounds: MEXT has been encourageHEIs to be conscious of explicit “principles” as opposedto uncousciously transmitted practices, or “traditions”and

• the “unit” of teaching a group of students with specificaspirations who expect a certain set of learningoutcomes, and sometimes professional qualificationsor eligibility for national qualification exams

• This time the encouragement has been made moreexplicitly spelled out so that each program must have alist of expected items of knowledge and cabapilities atstudent’s completion of the program.

• Some hazy shadow of competency-based andemployability approach

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QAA’s oblication to check those specifications

• Historical background: QAAs are notorious for beingpicky, too formalistic, not nice enough, in spite of thefact that most of enrolled students successfullygraduate and largely get employed

• New obligation: QAAs have to see if the expectedlearning outcomes listed are expected to be reached,how to do which nobody knows.

• We are wondering how we could respond to this newobligation

11/18/2016 10/13

Internal quality assurance and its external review

• Historical background: A QAA review an institutionexternally based on the Self-Study Report, which is aresult of the self-assessment of the institution

• If you receive a self-assessment report, you shouldassume the institution has complete self-assessment,whether or not the assessment is correct or not. Thatmeans it does its own internal quality assurance,whydoes a QAA has to look at internal quality assurance?

• We are wondering how we could make ourselvesunderstand the task

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Governance and Institutional Research

IR in Japan is various, but a couple of observations: namely,

• Lots of systems, “teaching portfolios,” “learningportfolios,” “IR Offices,” etc, but not very much usedeither by students, by faculty, or by the management,though they would be powerful once used incombination

• Lots of graphs, but no analyses

• Lots of sometimes duplicated committees, but noactions

Internal quality assurance assumes, and at the same timenecessitates, strong governance at the institution level,based on which alone institutiona research makes itself ofany service

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