A Study On The HE Quality Assurance In Australia

Being one of the developed western countries and with its highly popularized and internationalized Higher Education (HE), Australia has established a well functioned education quality Assurance (QA) system to ensure the sound development of Higher Education in both the scale and the quality. Each of the parties involved in this system, ie. Universities, the Federal and the State governments, the professional Associations in the community and some quality agencies, take their own responsibilities and play their due roles to maintain the high quality of the HE. AUQA, the Australian Universities Quality Agency which was established in 2000, is the key part of the system and has been working as the quality guardian for the HE in Australia for ten yeas. With its effective mechanism and scientific methods, it has become a leading QA organization in the HE sector in the world.This dissertation, based on some modern theories of management and education administration and by means of literature review and empirical analysis at both the macro and micro levels, aims to provide an exploration of the organizational mechanism, the operation and the quality audit model of AUQA. In the first part it provides a review of the literature of the studies on the worldwide different models and systems of quality assurance of higher education and especially studies on the quality Assurance development and situations of HE in Australian. In the second part it briefs the history of Australian universities, the expectations of the Australian government for the HE and describes the current QA system of Australian higher education and the different functions of each component. The third part consists of the 3d and 4th chapter and details all information on AUQA such as its constitutions,the mission,vision,value and the structure, members, board,staff and auditors, the audit stages, report and the audit themes and present a whole picture of the operation of the Australian National independent and nonprofit QA organization. In the 5th part, an analysis of the Audit theme, ie, the engagement of the community and the internationalization and with its context and practices is provided, which is a display of the procedures and checking points of AUQA's Audit, and also an illustration of the focus and concepts of Higher Education in Australia. In the next part, with the introduction of the process of an external review and its comments on AUQA's operation and achievements, and the details of the themes,lectures, workshops and proceedinds of Australian Universities Quality Forum (AUQF), it reveals the powerful effect of AUQA's audit activities and throw light on the successful fulfillment of AUQA's responsibility and functions.By Mentioning the coming Structural Reform of HE in Australia, it predicts that with the expansion of the function and coverage of the future AuQA, the new type of QA organization with even stonger power can be expected to be an even greater highlight to the HE QA movement. In the last part, based on the analysis of the characters of AUQA, it summrized that in terms of the organization function, being an independent and nonprofit Agency, AUQA is neither on behalf of the government and nor the higher education providers, but it can well balance the interests and demands of all the concerned parties of HE such as the nation, the universities, the communities, the students and their parents. In terms of auditing model, AUQA stresses on the combination of both external audit of the agency and the internal self-review of HE providers, and focuses both on the quality review and the quality promotion by providing QA guidelines, and it can also adopt the advanced QA and management theories and ideas and imply scientific and suitable methods and tools in its auditing, so it can be said that AUQA has successfully fulfilled its duty and realized its functions as an QA leader.In general, being an developing and pioneering QA agency and with the features of being internationalized and professionalized, AUQA can be used as a very good reference for Chinses Higher Education QA workers to develop and improve the QA system in China in such regards as promoting the concept of diversified HE Quality standards and encouraging the practice of "fitness for purposes" audit model and using different standards to evaluate the achievement of differently oriented HE providers,and also in regards of the professionaliztion, the diversification and internationalization of the Auditor sourses,the modernization, informationalization of HE QA techniques and methods and the regularization and legalization of the indepedent QA agency and its operation.