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The ‘Quality Game’: External Review and Institutional Reaction over Three Decades in the United States

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Quality Assurance In Higher Education

Part of the book series: Higher Education Dynamics ((HEDY,volume 20))

Quality assurance is not an easy topic to review from a policy perspective in the United States because of its bewildering variety. The absence of a national system of public higher education (and its associated ministry), coupled with the presence of myriad independent colleges and universities, mean that the function of quality assurance is both decentralised and dispersed. Individual states hold responsibility for funding and governing public institutions with concomitant variations in how they define ‘quality’ as well as their commitment and approach to determining if it is present. In parallel, responsibility for directly assuring quality for all institutions is delegated to a range of non-governmen`tal accrediting organisations, which operate under the regulatory aegis of the federal government, but which are otherwise diverse and independent. The resulting complexity – which is shared to a lesser degree by other federal systems like Germany – renders any attempt to determine the dynamics and impacts of quality assurance in US higher education a challenge indeed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS), USA

    Peter Ewell

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  1. Peter Ewell
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Twente, Netherlands

    Don F. Westerheijden

  2. NIFU-STEP, Oslo, Norway

    Bjørn Stensaker

  3. University of Aveiro, Portugal

    Maria João Rosa PhD

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Ewell, P. (2007). The ‘Quality Game’: External Review and Institutional Reaction over Three Decades in the United States. In: Westerheijden, D.F., Stensaker, B., Rosa, M.J. (eds) Quality Assurance In Higher Education. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6012-0_5

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