There is a consensus that decentralization by devolution leads to improved service delivery, but debate on the appropriate type of personnel arrangements for delivering decentralized services is far from over. Put differently, the discourse on whether civil service management should be decentralized or devolved still rages on. Little wonder that countries which started off with decentralized civil service management models in the 1990s are currently centralizing some aspects of personnel management while others are having centralized and decentralized personnel arrangements operating side by side in sub-national governments. The paper argues that civil service management should be decentralized whenever a country chooses the path of decentralization by devolution. Using Uganda’s example, the paper highlights two major challenges of managing the civil service under separate personnel arrangements: civil service appointments devoid of merit, and the perennial failure to attract and retain qualified human resource. The paper presents proposals on how to ensure meritocracy in appointments and how to bolster attraction and retention of human capital in local governments
Objective: Since the 1990s studies on how stakeholders in higher education perceive quality have burgeoned. Nevertheless, the majority of studies on perception of quality in higher education focus on students and employers. The few studies on academics’ perceptions of quality in higher education treat academics as a homogeneous group and, therefore, do not point out cross-disciplinary perspectives in perceptions of quality. This article explores how academics across six disciplines perceive quality in higher education. Method: The article is anchored in the interpretivist paradigm. Data was collected from 14 purposely selected academics at Makerere University in Uganda and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: The findings show that academics perceive quality in higher education as transformation, fitness for purpose, and exceptional. The findings further demonstrate that a stakeholder group or an individual stakeholder can subscribe to a notion of quality in higher education but voice divergent views on its variants. Similarly, the academic discipline, the perceived purpose of higher education, and the problems within a higher education system have an influence on stakeholders’ conception of quality in higher education. Conclusions: From the findings it can be inferred that quality in higher education defies a single definition and that stakeholders’ perceptions of quality do not take place in a vacuum. Implication for Theory and/or Practice: The multidimensional nature of quality and the contestations around it necessitate a multidimensional approach to assuring and assessing it.
The post-1980s changes in the global higher education landscape have triggered a burgeoning of incidents of academic corruption in higher education institutions. Since 2000, the discourse on how to combat academic corruption has gained traction in higher education and quality assurance is advanced as one of the strategies for fighting corruption in higher education. In 2016, UNESCO (and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation) issued a “wakeup call” to quality assurance systems to take up a leading role in the battle against academic corruption. However, a dearth of empirical and conceptual studies on how the quality assurance systems, in general, and external quality assurance systems, in particular, can take up a leading role in the crusade against academic corruption exists. This conceptual paper, using the crime-punishment model as an analytical lens, explores how the national quality assurance agencies (and systems) can exercise the leadership role in combating academic corruption. The paper advances the setting of academic integrity standards, institutional and programme accreditation, accreditation of academic journals, sharing information and promoting whistleblowing, monitoring of institutions, applying sanctions, and ranking of higher education institutions on the basis of integrity indicators as options that are available to quality assurance agencies in the exercise of their leadership role in combating academic corruption. These approaches are hypothesised to create both incentives and disincentives for the institutions and staff in connection with engaging in academic corruption. Nevertheless, the paper takes cognisance of the fact that external quality assurance is necessary but not sufficient in combating corruption at the level of the academy.
<p>Literature attests to limited systematic inquiry into students’ conceptions of good teaching in higher education. Resultantly, there have been calls for engaging students in construing what makes good university teaching and in developing a richer conception of teaching excellence. This interpretivist study that is based on views of final year university students from six academic disciplines investigated students’ conceptions of good teaching at Makerere University in Uganda. Students conceived good teaching as being student-centred, demonstrating strong subject and pedagogical knowledge, being approachable, being responsive, being organised, and being able to communicate well. Most of the conceptions of good teaching hinge on what the teacher does (the means) rather than affording high quality student learning (an end). It can therefore been concluded that good teaching is a multi-dimensional construct that defies a single definition and cannot be assured and assessed using a single indicator.</p>
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