Why higher education in the US and England needs a clearer definition of quality

Quality is a fundamental principle of higher education. Students expect it, universities and colleges claim to deliver it, regulators try to protect it, and governments promise it. Yet, despite its centrality, there is little agreement about what the term actually means. Drawing on evidence from England and the United States, I argue that we have work to do to define quality in higher education.

This is not just a theoretical issue. My experience of having led the Office for Students, the independent regulator for higher education in England, combined with my time conducting research in the United States, has persuaded me that efforts to improve quality must begin by setting out what we mean by it. Otherwise, there will be a mismatch between what students and the public expect, what is regulated, and what is delivered. This risks feeding public dissatisfaction, undermining confidence in higher education as well as its regulation.

A contested concept

Historically, quality has been associated with transformation in students’ knowledge, skills, critical thinking, and personal growth. The greater the transformation, the higher the quality. Quality is also seen as having a public good element whereby graduates contribute to stronger economies, communities, and culture. More recently, the concept has embraced consumer models, asking whether institutions are delivering what students expect in return for their (substantial) investment. Increasingly, policymakers in both the United States and England are focusing on quality as “value for money” in terms of graduate outcomes.

In recently published research,  I interviewed senior policymakers, regulators, and accreditors in England and the United States and asked them what they understood by quality. There was little consensus, with their views reflecting all the above meanings.

These different conceptions of quality are all legitimate, but they are not interchangeable. A university may perform strongly on one dimension and less well on another, and some may see high quality where others see failure (e.g., where a course is delivered with outstanding pedagogy but graduates fail to get jobs).

Any system of quality regulation and assurance must convert these conceptions into operational rules—being clear about what element they are targeting, when, and why, and doing so in a publicly accessible way.

Regulating quality without defining it

Both England and the United States treat institutions as having the primary responsibility for the quality of their education.

England operates a comparatively centralized regulatory model with greater emphasis on common sector-wide requirements. Institutions wishing to access government aid for their students must register with the Office for Students and satisfy baseline conditions covering academic standards, student support, educational resources, consumer protection, and graduate outcomes. Graduate outcomes include completion and progression into managerial or professional employment (or further study), with institutions required to meet minimum thresholds. Most registered institutions also have to participate in the Teaching Excellence Framework, a rating scheme that assesses performance above the baseline conditions, using broadly similar criteria but with more flexibility to reflect institutional context.

The United States operates a more decentralized approach, with greater weight given to institutional diversity and mission. Responsibility is shared between the federal government, state governments, and independent accrediting bodies. Federal policy places requirements on access to student financial aid, increasingly focusing on measures of student outcomes and return on investment. State oversight provides institutional authorization but generally defers considerations of quality to the accreditors. Accreditors’ criteria vary but typically encompass student learning, educational experience, and outcomes—though these are often positioned in terms of continuous improvement rather than absolute performance. (For instance, one accreditor criterion is that “students’ success outcomes demonstrate continuous improvement, taking into account the student populations it services …”). Critically, institutions generally have discretion over which recognized accreditor to select.

Despite obvious differences of scale and different regulatory arrangements, both countries face similar practical challenges.

First, some dimensions of quality, such as completion rates, employment, and graduate earnings, are relatively easy to measure (though decentralized data systems in the United States makes this more challenging). By contrast, dimensions of quality including intellectual development and civic engagement are much harder to quantify. Accountability systems risk privileging what can be measured.

A second challenge relates to context. How should regulatory systems compare outcomes across institutions serving students from a wide range of backgrounds and advantages? Setting lower thresholds that acknowledge the experience of students from disadvantaged backgrounds can bake in lower expectations, but setting higher thresholds can disproportionately punish institutions that enroll those students.

A third challenge relates to regulatory burden. Complaints about regulatory burden are common, and universities understandably emphasize compliance costs. Yet, we rarely seem to ask if the benefits of the regulation outweigh the costs.  

Does regulation improve quality?

Despite decades of regulation, we know remarkably little about whether and how regulation improves educational quality.

Our research found that only 16 evaluations have assessed the impact of quality regulation in England or the United States over the last 25 years. Very few identified positive impacts. Some cited insufficient time to observe effects; others pointed to inadequate data and methodological challenges. A recurring theme is the difficulty of conducting evaluations where the objectives of the regulation were themselves unclear.

Several studies of regulatory systems have examined administrative burden from the institutional perspective but not their impact on students’ education. No evaluations examined institutional autonomy as a factor, despite conventionally held theory that autonomy leads to better outcomes. Very few studies analyzed how different regulatory interventions, such as mandatory as opposed to incentivized requirements, affected student outcomes.

The field still has much to learn in this area.

Priorities for reform

With this context, I propose four priorities for government, regulators, accreditors, and the sector.

1. Define quality.

Quality will mean different things to different people. But when invoking the concept, policymakers should clearly state what components they are referencing. This would strengthen regulatory focus and its evaluation. It would bolster the legitimacy of institutional priorities. It would also inform student and public expectations, and reduce the space for institutional self-interest and political rhetoric (e.g., the bafflingly opaque invocation by English politicians of “Mickey Mouse courses” as shorthand for poor quality).

In fact, the other three priorities for reform all depend on this greater definitional clarity.

2. Distinguish between preventing poor quality and encouraging good quality.

Preventing poor quality and encouraging good quality require different regulatory approaches. Protecting students from spending their (and, in some cases, governments’) funds on institutions that fail to meet minimum standards of performance justifies the enforcement of robust minimum standards and decisive intervention. Promoting good quality is a different task that should allow greater scope for collaboration, institutional diversity, and innovation.¹

Conflating the two approaches risks mismatched regulation that bakes in low expectations under the rubric of continuous improvement, or fails to support excellence above any minimum standard. 

3. Evaluate impact rather than process.

Educational outcomes are influenced by various factors, and many dimensions of quality cannot be measured quantitatively. But across the social sciences, sophisticated approaches to evaluation are effective in combining quantitative and qualitative evidence (notwithstanding the Department of Education’s prioritization of experimental methods). We have good examples of evaluation informing policy in other contexts, including social mobility and education policy.

Higher education quality regulation should not be an exception in terms of being subject to evaluation. Evaluation is needed both to inform effective policy development and demonstrate its effectiveness.

4. Judge regulation by its benefits as well as its costs.

Good regulation involves trade-offs, and compliance with regulatory requirements can involve significant administrative costs. But the relevant question is not whether regulation imposes costs. It is whether those costs are outweighed by improvements in educational quality and public confidence.

A continuing challenge

Technological change, artificial intelligence, financial pressures, and evolving labor markets continue to reshape higher education in the United States and England. Being able to respond effectively requires a clear and publicly intelligible account of what is understood by quality and how regulation promotes and protects it. This is not simply a conceptual exercise. It is the foundation on which effective regulation, institutional autonomy, and public confidence in higher education and its regulation depend.