international education campusreview. com. au
Quality 101
Students should play a major role in defining successful higher education outcomes.
By Thomson Ch’ ng
This word‘ quality’ is something I have often come across in daily life as the president of the Council of International Students Australia. I think this is one of the favourite words in the education sector.
It’ s so common. Wherever I go and whomever I speak to, whether it’ s in a formal conference setting or a casual conversation over a catch up coffee, this word just comes out naturally. No doubt, it’ s a great topic for ice-breaking, too.
Regardless of the sector or industry we are in or what we do in life, quality is something many of us take pride in. It’ s getting even more important nowadays, especially in a competitive environment. This can be demonstrated by the growing trend of specialisation in quality management. Institutions have compliance teams to meet the minimum requirement in order to operate lawfully in this country.
But what do we mean by quality? How do we define quality? Who sets the standards? Why do institutions spend resources and effort getting assessment marks moderated and right in the first place? And why do students get frustrated when the evaluation of their lecturers shows their assessment does not meet the standard?
Let’ s take a step back and think about the purpose of this sector. We talk about how significant it is in shaping the future
of the society. Well, how exactly does it do that? You educate the students, you train them, nurture them and shape them to become whom they hope to be. They will then shape the society collectively. The quality of the students today will reflect the quality of tomorrow’ s products and services, and the lifestyle of the society. Our education system shapes the quality of doctors who will be treating patients, of mechanics who will be repairing our vehicles when they break down, of architects and engineers who are designing and building the cities we live in, of the chef who will be preparing scrumptious dinners to fill our hungry stomachs after a long day, of the political leaders who will be setting a vision and running countries – the list goes on.
The point is clear. The quality of our education system is defined by the end product, our graduates. The issue we are facing is the lack of innovation and creativity. The current education system is so broken, we are spending tremendous amounts of time, money, other resources and effort in trying to fix it. But remember, trying to fix it, doesn’ t mean that we are succeeding. And when we don’ t, blame is often placed on budget cuts, poor quality teachers, inadequate technology, ideologically driven curriculum and many other factors.
The education system is being structured like manufacturing. Students are being treated in much the same way as massproduced commodities. In most cases, they are being placed on an assembly line with a fixed, serial curriculum that uses standardised materials and testing.
In the past, the education system focused on teaching certain skills to the kids so they could use those skills productively for the rest of their lives. But today’ s society is fast-paced and technology driven. Today, jobs and skills are becoming obsolete as time goes by. Today, new categories of jobs are being created thanks to rapid advances in technology.
Let’ s take employability as a skill, for example. I often hear students complain about how getting through an interview process is a nightmare. I often hear how institutions need to ensure students are job ready by running workshops to help students be successful
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