A Comparative Study On The Quality Evaluation Of Higher Education In The United States And New Zealand

"Quality" appeared in higher education in 1990s. From then on, the world began to pay attention to the quality of their higher education, especially the quality assurance system of their higher education for which many countries have tried some new ways. Under the circumstances, quality evaluation of higher education, especially the audit evaluation, become an important measure to guarantee and improve the quality of higher education. Although different country has different audit evaluation paradigms, there are three paradigms generally:government-oriented audit evaluation, market-oriented audit evaluation, audit evaluation under the cooperation of government and university. Recently, "Multiple Equilibrium" paradigm appeared and the integration of the power of government, universities and social public in higher education tends to be reasonable gradually. China’s may belong to the government-oriented audit evaluation, while the United States’ belongs to market-oriented audit evaluation and New Zealand’s belongs to the audit evaluation under the cooperation of government and university. In order to stimulate the development of China’s higher education and put forward helpful recommendations for its fledging quality audit evaluation of higher education, we must draw lessons from different audit evaluation paradigms and learn their advantages.Recently, the United States has been actively introducing and effectively implementing the audit evaluation of higher education, which has improved its quality of higher education remarkably. Among the bellwethers, Tennessee has done a better job. New Zealand is also one of the bellwethers to implement audit evaluation and has rich experience in guaranteeing the quality of higher education. Its audit evaluation started in 1994 and now the fifth round is on the way. For these, its audit evaluation system is mature by comparison and its success will provide applicable experience for the newcomers in this area.This paper begins with the "Governance Theory" and the "Triangular Coordination Theory" and takes Tennessee’s and New Zealand’s quality audit evaluation of higher education for examples. More importantly, after analyzing their audit evaluation practices from two aspects-the internal audit and external audit, the author find that they have seven points in common:① They both aim at improving the quality of higher education, while taking both norms and characteristics into consideration; ②They both adopt the qualitative, international standards, and attach great importance to evidence; ③They are both conducting a college level evaluation in which internal and external audit are happened at the same time;④Their evaluation agency are neutral and legislative and they both must get the recognition of a meta-evaluation agency; ⑤ Both of them attach great importance to the auditors’training; ⑥ They lay emphasis on team spirit, and enjoy a wide social participation; ⑦ Their practices have brought positive impact on their higher education system. In addition, this paper also summarizes differences from internal and external audit respectively. In the end, the author deeply reflects on the first round of audit evaluation in China and comes up with some improvement measures:①Respect academic authority and practices;②Select audit scope and auditors carefully;③ Build neutral and independent audit agencies which are under the protection of law, and establish meta-evaluation agencies;④Enhance peer-review and social supervision;⑤ Adopt appropriate audit criterion; ⑥Attach importance to the follow-ups of audit evaluation.