Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A Study of Developing Countries

A Study of Developing Countries

David Lim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138635685
• eBook ISBN: 9781351790130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2001. Universities in developing countries have followed their counterparts in developed countries and adopted quality assurance to improve the quality of their activities. This text examines the wisdom of such a move when many of the conditions necessary for its success are not present. It concludes that quality assurance can be useful in developing countries because it shows how a university's seemingly disparate activities are related to one another to serve a common goal and how the quality of these can best be improved by using an integrated approach. Quality assurance also provides more focus and direction to the work of the traditional university system. However, it must be modified to suit the conditions prevailing in developing countries by being simple in design, modest in expectations and realistic in requirements.

1 Education and Economic Development

1.1 Development Performances of Developing Countries

When countries in Asia, Africa and Latin-America obtained independence in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they were given little chance of improving their economies. Past economic performances were poor, population growth rates high, and terms of trade for primary products, their main source of employment and income, were said to be in secular decline. For many, their colonial masters had left them, after long years of exploitation, with poor physical, social and economic infrastructures, including a labour force that was poorly educated.

Even the terms used to describe the countries were foreboding of economic doom. First, they were condescendingly called backward, which implied a sense of economic hopelessness. Then they became underdeveloped, an equally pessimistic term, with its overtone of under-performance. After this, some called them Third World, after the First World of rich and largely industrial Western countries, and the Second World of the Soviet-bloc countries. This was inappropriate because many Second World countries did not enjoy a much better standard of living than many Third World countries. It was also pessimistic because it still implied a third-class economic performance. Eventually and perhaps begrudgingly, they became developing countries, possibly in recognition of the economic progress made and the need to be more politically correct.

In fact, much to everyone’s surprise, the development performances of developing countries in the period after independence surpassed anything that was thought possible. Real output grew much faster than population to produce significant increases in income per head. Table 1.1 shows that in the 25 years after 1950 their real output grew by an average of 3.4 per cent a year, compared to the 3.2 per cent registered by developed countries. The forecast by Rosenstein-Rodan (1961) that no developing country would achieve a growth rate in per capita income of more than 3 per cent turned out to be way off the mark.

Difficult international economic conditions in the 1980s slowed the rate of economic growth in developing countries after 1975. However, Table 1.2 shows that the growth rate in income per head of 2.5 per cent over the period 1965–90 still exceeded, or kept pace with, the 2.4 per cent recorded by developed nations.

Table 1.1 GNP per capita and its annual growth rate, 1950–75

	Population	GNP per head
Region	1975 (millions)	1950	1975 (1974 US$)	Annual growth rate 1950–75 (%)
South Asia	830	85	132	1.7
Africa	924	170	308	2.4
Latin America	304	495	944	2.6
East Asia	312	130	341	3.9
China	820	113	320	4.2
Middle East	81	460	1,660	5.2
Developing countries	2,732	160	375	3.4
Developed countries	654	2,378	5,238	3.2

Source: Morawetz (1977, p. 13).

Tables 1.3 and 1.4 take the story of growth performances up to 1998. Again, difficult international economic conditions in the 1990s led to a further slowing down of the growth rate in the per capita income of all countries. For the first time, the growth rate of developing countries (1.6 per cent) fell below that of developed countries (2.2 per cent).

Then, in July 1997, the currencies of many Asian countries, starting with that of Thailand, came under sustained attack. The subsequent drastic fall in the values of the currencies of many of these countries, particularly Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia, reduced very significantly their economic growth rates. The GNP per capita for East Asia and the Pacific fell by 2.2 per cent over the 1997–98 period (Table 1.4). In the early days of the crisis, the most frequently heard reasons for the worst affected East Asian countries were economic mismanagement, and cronyism and nepotism of a high order. Later, it was argued that speculators played a part, because the extent of the economic mismanagement could not justify the extent of the fall in the value of the currencies. Probably a case can be made that the role of the speculation varies directly with the extent to which the economy was mismanaged. Thus, the currencies of Singapore and Taiwan were the least affected, probably because the two countries have the most efficiently run economies in East Asia.

Table 1.2 GNP per capita and its annual growth rate, 1965–90

	Population	GNP per head
Region	1990 (millions) (US$)	1990 (%)	Annual growth rate 1965–90
Sub-Saharan Africa	495	340	0.2
East Asia and Pacific	1,577	600	5.3
South Asia	1,148	330	1.9
Europe	200	2,400	–
Middle East and North Africa	256	1,790	1.8
Latin America and the Caribbean	433	2,180	1.8
Developing countries	4,146	840	2.5
Developed countries	816	19,590	2.4

Note: – not available.

Source: World Bank (1992, p. 219).

The East Asian countries affected are largely on the road to economic recovery. For example, the estimated 1999 growth rate for Thailand, which has the assistance of International Monetary Fund, is 5.0 per cent, compared to the −10.4 per cent for 1998. The estimate for Malaysia, which has acted on its own with unorthodox capital control measures, is 5.4 per cent, compared to the −7.5 per cent for 1998. Even for Indonesia, the worst affected economically, socially and politically, the estimated growth rate is 0.1 per cent, compared to −13.2 per cent for the previous year.

In summary, in the first twenty-five years of development, 1950–75, the growth rates in the per capita income of developing countries were unexpectedly high and exceeded those registered by developed countries. Another notable achievement is the significant reduction in the incidence of poverty (i.e., the percentage of the population living below the poverty line) in many countries (Morawetz, 1977, p. 40). On the other hand, Table 1.5 shows that income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, worsened over the period 1960–80 for developing countries as a whole and for two of the three sub-groups (low-income and oil-exporting). This was due to a worsening in income distribution between different countries and within individual countries.

Table 1.3 GNP per capita and its annual growth rate, 1965–96

	Population	GNP per capita
Region	1996 (millions)	1996 (US$)	Annual growth rate 1965–96 (%)
Sub-Saharan Africa	596	490	−0.2
East Asia and Pacific	1,732	890	5.5
South Asia	1,266	380	2.2
Europe and Central Asia	478	2,200	−1.3
Middle East and North Africa	276	2,070	−1.8
Latin America and the Caribbean	486	3,710	1.1
Developing countries	4,834	1,190	1.6
Developed countries	919	2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Education and Economic Development
• 2 Principles of Quality Assurance in Higher Education
• 3 Quality Assurance in Higher Education in the United Kingdom
• 4 Quality Assurance in Higher Education in Australia
• 5 Framework for Analysing Relevance
• 6 Relevance of Quality Assurance in Developing Countries
• 7 Quality Assurance for Developing Countries
• 8 Quality in Papua New Guinean Higher Education
• 9 Future of Quality Assurance in Higher Education
• Bibliography
• Index