Caribbean Quality Culture

Persistent Commitment to Improving Higher Education

Sandra Ingrid Gift

• Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9789766400411

Caribbean Quality Culture takes the Caribbean higher education community and its stakeholders beyond quality assurance of higher education to delve into an exploration and assessment of the application of continuous quality improvement principles and strategies that are essential elements of a mature and effective quality management system in higher education institutions.

The principles and strategies that can actually result in continuous quality improvement may not always be fully understood throughout higher education institutions. This collection seeks to bridge this gap to facilitate successful implementation of continuous quality improvement in such operational areas as governance and administration, student development and learning outcomes, and external quality assurance.

Experienced and respected Caribbean higher education stakeholders, including leaders and practitioners, explore a range of topics, such as leadership, stakeholder engagement, the online learning environment, curriculum development and curriculum renewal for sustainable development, the transformative development of students, and the continuous quality improvement implications for the Caribbean of international and regional developments in the higher education sector.

1.

Contextualizing Caribbean Higher Education Quality Culture

SANDRA INGRID GIFT

The University of the West Indies (The UWI) and other institutions in the Caribbean higher education sector persist in their commitment to investing financial and human resources, as well as the resource of time, into the major project of assuring stakeholders of the quality of Caribbean higher education institutions’ (HEIs) products and services. At the same time, they are concerned that this considerable investment is yielding the desired benefits as they relate to improvement of quality, as opposed to assurance of quality only. The intention of this publication, therefore, is to focus on the deliberate strategies employed to achieve improvement of the quality of Caribbean higher education, as part of or in addition to quality assurance (QA) processes in institutions that have been investing in building a quality culture.

The QA system of The UWI has served as a regional benchmark for an internal QA system for some Caribbean institutions in the field of higher education. These include, for example, the National Accreditation Body of Suriname, the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago, and the University of Guyana. The UWI is ranked by Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 among the world’s top 4 per cent universities and has risen to the top 2 per cent of universities in Latin America and the Caribbean, as indicated by Times Higher Education Latin America University Rankings 2020 (UWI 2019b). Further, The UWI is now on a list of the top one hundred universities of the Times Higher Education “Golden Age” University Rankings.¹ The UWI has also been ranked among the top 200 of 768 universities from 85 countries for its work on Goals 3, 5 and 13 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals respectively: Good Health and Wellbeing, Gender Equality, and Climate Action (UWI 2020). As Howe notes: “Many of the trends, issues, problems and challenges facing tertiary education today are being dramatically played out at the UWI, an institution which the Caribbean governments have designated as the regional university, and given a specific developmental and leadership mandate within the region” (Howe 2005, 14).

Established in 1948, The UWI’s enrolment across four of the then existing campuses for the five-year period 2013/14 to 2017/18 was 239,516, with a graduate output of 50,488 for the same period (UWI 2019a). The UWI is supported by seventeen countries and territories of the anglophone Caribbean, which comprises the independent countries that form part of the Commonwealth Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The anglophone Caribbean also comprises current British Overseas Territories that are also contributing members of The UWI: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat and Turks and Caicos Islands. All of these countries are either full or associate members of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), the secretariat for which is based in Guyana.

This publication seeks to focus on key higher education issues that are of importance to the Caribbean and for which continuous quality improvement (CQI) strategies could add significant value in terms of enhancing the efficient use of resources to produce desired results. These issues are indicated by the titles of the various parts and chapters of the book. While relating to current practice and developments at The UWI and in the higher education sector more broadly, these issues offer lessons and insights that can also be of value to other Caribbean institutions in the higher education sector in our efforts to avoid or overcome institutionalized inefficiency. These lessons and insights can also support the role of higher education as “a primary force driving the sustainability of development” (Nettleford 2002, v).

Employers and other stakeholders who interact with the output and outcomes of Caribbean HEIs are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of programmes and their graduates. In the case of The UWI, such feedback is routinely obtained in meetings with external stakeholders during QA programme reviews, as well as via external and internal stakeholder feedback surveys. It is generally recognized that there is always room for improvement at all levels of institutional life.

A focus on strategies for CQI is therefore warranted and this publication seeks to place a spotlight on this issue, given its critical importance to the development of Caribbean nations. “It is the educated people of a nation, even of a poor nation, who will assert their nation’s interest in the increasingly complex web of global economic, cultural and political interactions. Without better higher education, it is hard to imagine how many poor countries will cope. Improving higher education is therefore in every country’s interest, and has legitimate claims on public funds” (World Bank 2000, 43). While there continues to be much debate regarding the role of education generally in society, there has been increased recognition of the need to improve the quality of higher education. Contributing reasons for this include concerns about the impact of higher levels of enrolment on quality, reconfiguration and diversification of the higher education sector and growing attention to issues of accountability and relevance (Howe 2005).

The thematic areas discussed in this publication as they relate to CQI bring focus to just a selection of current issues that Caribbean higher education communities are investing resources to improve. These efforts are consistent with the need for caution against complacency once organizations have achieved national standards and to persist in the commitment to continuous improvement (Dottin and Oakland 1992). Contributors to this publication explore the nature of this commitment in both the academic and administrative platforms of Caribbean higher education.

Higher education is “also known as tertiary education in some countries” (World Bank 2017) and refers to post-secondary education for which a prerequisite is “a degree of mastery of basic and general education” (Miller 2000), and that leads to the award of a degree. While, for the most part, contributions to this publication focus on the environment of The UWI in which research features prominently in the institutional mission, issues relating to CQI processes in core higher education operations should prove to be helpful to other institutions in the anglophone Caribbean higher education sector generally.

Quality Culture

Bendermacher et al. (2017) validate the view of Harvey and Stensaker (2008) that a quality culture is complex and socially constructed. It can be appreciated within its specific context and is not a phenomenon that can be merely transplanted from one organization to another. Harvey and Stensaker provide a useful framework for understanding the nature of quality culture in higher education, which may be described as being responsive, reactive, regenerative or reproductive. The field of quality in higher education in the Caribbean is significantly impacted by national and regional policies that seek to meet the needs of the local and regional environments. It is also impacted by international developments as well as the adaptation of international good practice. In the case of The UWI, this fact is frequently observed and commented on by external reviewers and accreditation evaluators. As a whole, the Caribbean higher education system has traditionally had a focus on integrating an international dimension in the areas of teaching and learning, as well as research and service, with an “emphasis on adherence to international standards”. This aspect of internationalization is critical for Caribbean HEIs, for which the ability of graduates to be internationally mobile for employment or further studies is a priority. “Thus, to a large extent, internationalization in a Caribbean context might most appropriately be viewed as the extent to which the Caribbean provides access to tertiary education at international standards of scope, quality and relevance” (Wint 2010, 262).

Taking such influences into consideration, one may surmise that, in general terms, the Caribbean higher education quality culture includes elements that, to some extent, are reflective of at least three of the four types of quality culture identified by Harvey and Stensaker (2008). The quality culture can be described as responsive to the need for accountability and compliance, as well as the need to learn from and adapt relevant good and wise practice. However, it is at times also characterized internally by a “lack of buy-in to a quality culture as a way of life and lack of feeling of ownership or of any real control” (Harvey and Stensaker 2008, 436). The quality culture can also be reactive, including elements such as, “reservations about the potential outcomes … doubts about any improvement potential resulting from evaluation” and “driven by compliance and reluctant accountability”. It can be perceived to be “externally constructed, managed and imposed” (Harvey and Stensaker 2008, 436).

To the extent that Caribbean higher education is focused on internal developments while remaining aware of the external environment and the associated expectations, it can also be described as exhibiting elements of a regenerative quality culture. The fourth type of quality culture, the reproductive quality culture, gives priority to maintaining the status quo. In the Caribbean context, which is open to the influences of globalization and increased competitiveness, maintaining the status quo is not likely to be embraced unless it relates to good practice that is recognized and rewarded.

Structures are not sufficient for quality enhancement, and quality culture is not the solution to challenges but rather “a concept for identifying potential challenges” (Harvey and Stensaker 2008, 438). Quality culture is a mindset, not just checking outputs; it is an ideological question and must be owned by those who live it, as opposed to being viewed by them as a “managerialist fad” that is disempowering in any way. There is an important role for “localized” knowledge and practice in institutional QA strategies. “It is only when including such localized knowledge that the structure and culture will merge into a specific ‘quality culture’ ” (437–38). Indeed, this perspective resonates with the concern that the Caribbean higher education system’s embrace of an international focus can render it “less responsive to local realities” (Wint 2010, 260).

One of the challenges for Caribbean educational policymakers is indeed “how to provide a quality education that is sensitive to the ‘local’ context while remaining responsive to the demands of the ‘global’ market” (Louisy 2004, 285). “Local” in the Caribbean has been described as “a context of accommodation, integration and even assimilation” (289), alluding to the impact of the global environment on the local environment. Being grounded in the local context and informed by local knowledge as well as global imperatives require that regional education systems be open to the idea of change (Louisy 2004). In respect of higher education specifically, QA approaches are considered more likely to succeed if initiated internally than if imposed or “simplistically based on alien institutional models”. Further, this necessity for sensitivity to the local context requires motivating staff and students to become engaged in processes for enhancing teaching and learning as “quality improvement will result from involvement, not inspection” (Beckles, Perry and Whiteley 2002, ix).

The exploration of CQI or quality enhancement in a range of Caribbean higher education areas as discussed in this publication privileges the local or regional Caribbean context, while being informed by international developments reflected in the literature on quality in higher education. In essence, the commitment of HEIs to CQI is indicative of a receptivity to change in the interest of the region’s development but, of course, the question is what change will achieve the best and most sustainable improvement. It is in grappling with such questions that CQI strategies such as adopting best practices, benchmarking or application of the plan-do-check-act (P-D-C-A) CQI cycle, for example, can be helpful.

Bearing in mind the caveats offered by Harvey and Stensaker (2008) and Louisy (2004) quality culture as defined by the European University Association provides a useful approach to the discussion of the culture of CQI in Caribbean higher education. According to the European University Association (EUA) quality culture is “an organisational culture that intends to enhance quality permanently and is characterised by two distinct elements: on the one hand, a cultural/psychological element of shared values, beliefs, expectations and commitm...