Constructing Higher Education Evaluation Systems for the Global Era

Abstract

This paper outlines the rationales shaping the papers presented in this issue of the International Journal of Chinese (IJCE). To provide context for the contributions, it looks at policy contexts, institutional developments, major guiding research projects, and various engagement platforms. The papers are reviewed in terms of their implications for shaping the future of higher education evaluation and success.

1 Introduction

This issue of the International Journal of Chinese (IJCE) Education provokes thinking about the design of higher education success and associated evaluation systems. It includes five papers in which senior scholars and international thought-leaders reflect and build on contemporary policy, institutional, research developments and engagements. Reviewing these framing contexts is a useful prelude to sketching the contours of the papers which follow.

2 Shaping Developments

The papers were framed in varying ways by contemporary Chinese higher education policy dynamics. China’s broad interest in diversifying higher education was affirmed in the thirteenth five-year national plan (2016 to 2020) and associated sector-level policies. This plan signalled the country’s interest in “moving up the value chain,” in creating more balanced prosperity across the country, in greater international cooperation, in harnessing social value from academic research, and in sharpening the regulation of financial and also environmental and social systems. As part of this momentum, the Double World Class (DWC) plan was outlined in 2015 as a replacement to earlier sector-shaping projects like 211 and 985. The DWC plan delves deeper within universities to encourage nation-wide development of disciplines and education programs.

As this very brief summary conveys, contemporary Chinese planning and development is going beyond emphasising the production of globally indexed scientific papers to as well focus on how higher education can engage more deeply with communities in China and globally to use education and research to create new kinds of prosperity. This encapsulates thinking about how to capture value from the large diaspora of people who completed bachelor’s degrees and engage them with the local community to drive innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration. It considers the potential of a system that now annually produces as many doctoral graduates as other major higher education regions. It builds on insights gleaned over the last dozen years from experience developing and responding to global rankings. It looks to a future in which bibliometric competitions are seen as a smaller part of a much larger and more significant story. It looks well beyond a recent past of policy borrowing, and to the creation of national policy mechanisms and to a broader geopolitical rebalancing of global higher education investment, energy and contribution.

Myriad institutional developments have spawned in response to this policy milieu. One of direct relevance to the papers in this issue of IJCE has been establishment in July 2017 of the Tsinghua University Global Research Center for the Assessment of College and Student Development (ACSD). ACSD is supported by the Institute of Education Tsinghua University with sponsorship from Apply Square, an EdTech start-up based in the Tsinghua University Science Park (TUSPARK). ACSD conducts research and engagement that creates a better future for higher education. It has a particular focus on student evaluation and university development, providing thought-leadership for Tsinghua, China and global collaborators to tackle major challenges. By creating academic value and offering policy solutions, it is working to become an evaluation capability with global influence.

Aligned with the formation of ACSD has been a growing suite of high-level policy projects. One research project funded by the Ministry of Education involves development of a multidimensional and multilevel evaluation system for all Chinese higher education institutions in the era of Double World Class construction (Shi, 2017). A project for the Department of Degree Management and Postgraduate Education at the Ministry of Education has focused on monitoring and evaluating the development of universities and colleges selected into the first round of the DWC plan. China’s Higher Education Association commissioned a further project to develop an evaluation system for DWC universities and colleges.

These policy, institutional and research developments framed a conference held in July 2018 at Tsinghua University. The conference was titled “Constructing Higher Education Evaluation Systems for the Global Era.” Many of the papers in this issue of IJCE were motivated by this conference. The specific rationale for the conference was that many prominent higher education evaluation systems are decades old, much has changed in recent years, and it is timely to design next-generation approaches. Rather than leave the future of higher education to chance evolution, an alternative is for experts and leaders to create and lead new directions, addressing big questions. For instance: What institutional, national and global structures will make sense of fresh changes? In what ways can universities transform in coming decades? What higher education research is needed to inform and sustain future development? What stories and data sources are needed to capture the value created through research, education and engagement?

Six conference themes were defined to frame reactions to these big questions. The first theme focused on challenges for higher education evaluation in the global era. This includes complexities around and for higher education development. What is the shape of the next 20 years, and how can it be evaluated? What major opportunities can be seized and what risks lie waiting? Theme two focused on developing disciplinary evaluations, highly relevant to the DWC plan. This looked at how to define and build evaluation systems that are sensitive to disciplines and also have broader relevance to other areas and higher education as a whole. Are general evaluations possible, or is the disciplinary epistemology primary? How to classify and balance disciplines? The third theme embraced the construction of evaluation concepts and indicators within universities. This topic was about the world within universities and building diagnostic systems for leaders and all faculty and students that reveal and promote quality. In essence, this was about how to establish relevance on the ground in ways that “add up” between institutions? Theme four was about the innovation of higher education evaluation systems. This theme looked at how evaluation systems have changed, and methodologies for development. The form and function of evaluation systems determines how they are accepted and used. What are the major problems with current approaches? What feasible options can be harnessed to shape progress? Theme five focused on higher education evaluation data systems and data governance. Data plays an important role in higher education evaluation, and understanding its nature and governance is crucial for progress. What kinds of data and analytical platforms will shape future evaluations? How are systems designed and developed? Last, theme six looked at the use and impact of higher education evaluation systems. In the global era universities must skip well beyond campus walls and dance with a much wider range of stakeholders. How can such boundaries be defined? What lessons can be learned from other sectors? What are the implications for core/traditional academic work? As this overview conveys, rather than swim in around in weeds created by matters like bibliometrics and statistical testing, the conference sought to stimulate broad thinking about sectoral, institutional and evaluation futures.

3 Considering the Papers

These policy, institutional, research and engagement settings frame the five papers which follow. Many of the papers flowed directly form the July 2018 conference, while others were shaped by related developments. The authors are leaders, recognised through publication, institutional and community leadership, and project accomplishment.

The first paper (see King) looks at the role that numbers play in framing thinking about higher education. The last twenty years have seen an up-tick in the emphasis placed on numbers. At the same in, broader changes in information technologies are creating new forms of numbers which are non-ignorable in higher education. The prevailing peer-review quality movement took many years to make sense of higher education rankings, a project which continues. A somewhat similar interpretive struggle is underway to make sense of social media. The article debates the nature and role of prevailing and emerging forms of numerical information, and the continued role of expert judgement.

The second paper (see Sá) take a different stance to examine education futures, looking at the role played by entrepreneurship education in student success. Drawing from insights gleaned in the Canadian province of Ontario, the paper generates insights of direct relevance to Chinese higher education. While entrepreneurship education has its formal antecedents in North American higher education, it has been given rapid escalation in China. For instance, in synchrony with broader development, in 2016 China’s State Council issued a circular to promote the building of mass entrepreneurship and innovation demonstration bases (China State Council, 2016).

The third paper (see Hazelkorn and Lu) returns focus to the development of ‘meaningful’ higher education evaluation systems, considering implications for China. What are global trends regarding transparency, accountability and quality assurance? How do traditions forged in largely Euro-American discourse communities play out in China? In deliberating about these matters, the paper considers how Chinese universities have reacted to rankings, the governance of Chinese universities, and emerging perspectives.

The fourth paper (see Hovdhaugen and Stensaker) probes open a topic often at the core of higher education quality, students’ timely completion of degrees. It draws insights from across Europe, teasing out considerations for universities and for public policy. The paper makes teasing remarks about the uncertain and perhaps declining influence of public policy in mature higher education systems. The first and second laws of CHEPS come to mind here, that if universities are smart, they are hard to regulate, and that universities which are not so savvy are also hard to regulate, hence that highly devolved systems of higher education are hard to regulate (File, Beerkens, Leisyte, Salerno & Vinifera, 2005). More teasingly, the paper raises questions about drawing firm conclusions from large-scale empirical policy analyses of higher education. This excites broader consideration about how to understand, value hence advance higher education.

The final paper (see Borden) returns to the theme of evaluation. With reference to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which he directs, he looks at options for classifying not just the performance but also the characteristics of higher education institutions. The knowledge society places more burden on higher education institutions. To deliver, argues Borden, universities should not just produce more research and education, but also do so in socially relevant ways. Borden explores options for moving beyond isomorphic institutional striving to multiply the contribution of universities, perspectives well aligned with contemporary Chinese policy thinking.

4 Concluding Thoughts

Through their papers, the authors represented in this special issue make insightful and it is hoped impactful contributions to designing higher education evaluation systems. We are grateful to the authors for the contributions, and to the people and institutions that have made these possible. By publishing these very valuable papers, IJCE seeks to reach an important and wide audience with interest in the higher education development. This audience includes Chinese and international researchers, Chinese policy-makers, and the international higher education community.