Playing language games: higher education quality dynamics in Dutch national policies since 1985

Abstract

Higher education quality is a vague, ambiguous, multiple, and essentially contested concept. Quality's contested character involves endless disputes about its proper use which makes it problematic to handle in governmental policies. Wittgenstein's notion of language games is used to understand how, through time, higher education quality is enacted in Dutch governmental policy texts, and how its uses are related to each other. The analysis depicts various quality games interacting with different policy contexts, which show multiple enactments of quality as a unified concept alongside more differentiated uses. In the policy games, quality is not the focal notion. The games center around the steering relationship with the institutions, which are placed 'at distance'. Through time, the games respond to increasing societal complexity and competition, and foster further flexibilization of institutional policies regarding quality and accessibility. In this management discourse with the institutions, quality is not used contrastively. It is concluded that quality's vague and contradictory enactments and valuations are not problematic in the institutional steering relationship. Recent policy texts however relate quality's 'proper use' to activities that enhance the student's learning process. This draws attention to paradoxes for a distancing government in its role as a universal actor with societal responsibilities.

An Extensive Literature Review on the Predominant Conceptualizations of Quality in Higher Education and Its Main Components

“…These are clearly much higher figures than those corresponding to any other article and/or authors who have published studies on this subject in SJR-2019 journals. As already discussed, there is a wide range of discourses that employ and define the quality concept, but not all of them are convergent or refer to the same thing (Harvey and Green, 1993;Toranzos, 1996;Weenink, Aarts and Jacobs, 2018). Half a century ago Kripke showed that naming and describing are not synonymous, since "when describing, predicative elements of the named object are enunciated, but [...] names have no sense of their own" (Cárdenas-Marín, 2016, pp.…”

“…On these bases, those who, like Municio (2005), align themselves around a conception of quality "pour soi", focus on the analysis of quality throughout the process followed by an educational program, with emphasis on its results and effects, while those who, like Aguerrondo (1993), lean towards a conception of quality "en soi", assume a perspective that privileges systemic studies focused on educational policies and on the ideological and pedagogical choices made by planners and decision-makers. This view is shared by authors from different geographical and disciplinary backgrounds (i.e., Lemaitre, 2010;Nabaho, Aguti, and Oonyu (2019); Prisacariu and Shah (2016); Weenink, Aarts, and Jacobs, 2018). Aguerrondo (1993) suggests that there is quality where there is consistency between the general political project in force and the educational project implemented or, more specifically, "between [its] fundamental axes (ideological, political, pedagogical, etc.)…”

“…In the field of higher education the concept of quality is highly controversial (Acevedo, 2008) and complex (Acosta, 2015;Cabrera, 2005;Cardoso, Rosa, and Stensaker, 2016;Harvey and Green, 1993;Larrauri, Espinosa, and Robles, 2015) Its nature has been highlighted as ubiquitous and, as different groups of agents attribute various meanings to it, elusive (Cheng, 2014;Goff, 2017;Gvaramadze, 2008;Harvey and Green, 1993;Nabaho, Aguti, and Oonyu, 2019;Neave, 1986;Newton, 2002Newton, , 2010Prisacariu and Shah, 2016;Weenink, Aarts, and Jacobs, 2018). In many works it is also described as a multidimensional concept (i.e., Avci, 2017;Barreto and Kalnin, 2018;Brunner, 1992;Elton, 1998;Green, 1994;Harvey and Green, 1993;Kleijnen, Dolmans, Willems, and Van Hout, 2013;Krause, 2012;Nabaho, Aguti, and Oonyu, 2019;Reeves and Bednar, 1994;Sarrico, Rosa, Teixeira, and Cardoso, 2010;Scharager, 2018;Toranzos, 1996;Vesce, Cisi, Gentile, and Stura, 2020;Westerheijden, Stensaker, and Rosa, 2007), dynamic (Boyle and Bowden, 1997;Ewell, 2010;Harvey 2005;Westerheijden, Stensaker, Rosa and Corbett, 2014) and relative, as it depends on how it is perceived and conceptualized by different actors in the field (Baird, 1998;…”

Creative tensions in progressive higher education

“…A globalised market, heightened competition and an all too evident corporatisation of institutions of higher education have profoundly altered not just the workings of these institutions but also the needs and circumstances of the students they serve. And such trends, beginning decades ago, have only intensified in our current context (Giroux, 2014;Jessop, 2018;Keeling & Hersh, 2011;Saad-Filho & Johnson, 2004;Schrecker, 2010;Weenink, Aarts, & Jacobs, 2018). 1 For more financially and academically secure institutions (clearly a minority), the shifting terrain may present opportunities for creative response.…”