English HE’s global reputation harmed by quality concerns – QAA

Good riddance to the misnamed QAA ans also lets boot out the OfS. These two organisation have created a staggering growth of negative value added bureaucratic jobs in UK universities. The bureaucrats breed like rabbits and gobble up way too much resource. This means the academics are overworked and underpaid because too much money is being WASTED on bureaucrats, senior mangers and their little empires.

A plague on both houses.

Spot on both. Unfortunately the corrupt edifice of much of UK 'HE' is being seen for what it is. The use and abuse of our reputation for integrity and commitment to rigorous enquiry to milk student consumers for all they can. And now they are surprised that Wizard of Oz style, that overseas 'markets' have cottoned on. Unfortunately I don't think academics as a whole have sufficiently jealously guarded our hard-won reputation for intellectual endeavour.

I would have expected a better level of comment from academics, other than the outpouring of petty resentment directly above. However, it does illustrate the impact on academic life of the long- expanding quality assurance regimes? As research states, there's an ongoing battle over who makes decisions in/for universities; essentially a tussle for power between academic professionals and the sector's wider stakeholders, particularly governments. As the OfS is "a non-departmental public body of the Department for Education", can't help but see this as a move towards further government control. The QAA worked with strong representation from the HE sector. Less representation from the sector is hardly going to improve collaboration with the institutions. The battle sadly continues.