Always reforming – the University

I spent three full days at a university in late November as part of an academic audit. This visit was a step toward ensuring that Ontario universities offer high-quality and continuously improving education. Just as our reformed heritage calls for always reforming the church, universities continuously seek academic improvement.

Quality assurance

Several years ago, the Council of Ontario Universities set up the Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance (QC) to independently maintain the quality of university education in the province. The QC oversees two processes: first, their Assessment Committee approves new academic programs suggested by a university. Second, every eight years, each public university is assessed by auditors from the Audit Committee to see if the process of assessing teaching quality is being followed. Both these committees are filled by senior, experienced academics with considerable administrative experience.

After serving nine years as the chair of the Psychology Department at Laurier, I was asked to serve on the Audit Committee with about 15 other academics. This work has given me insight into how institutions can review their mandate and provide a reasonably objective evaluation of how, in this case, teaching might be improved. It suggests parallels with our church’s call to continuously look at Scripture and see how close our practices and doctrines are to what the Bible teaches.

The QC provides an arms-length, self-regulated process for assessing academic quality and fostering continuous improvement so the public can be assured our universities meet high standards. This body is independent of the government, so politics do not impact the quality of education; rather, people with knowledge of the system assess its quality. (Universities like Redeemer, which are not publicly funded, follow similar processes to maintain academic quality but work more directly with a branch of the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities.)

Framework within a framework

In Ontario, the QC works within a formal Quality Assurance Framework. Consistent with this framework, each university has set up its own institutional quality assurance process (IQAP), reflecting each university’s specific system and procedures. The Audit Committee reviews and approves these IQAPs to ensure they are consistent with the Quality Assurance Framework.

All new programs must go through a process where they describe their program, which external ‘experts in the discipline then review before the university can recommend it to the Assessment Committee of the QC for approval. The university’s IQAPs describe how the university approves a new program; how a university makes major modifications to existing programs; and how it reviews each academic program regularly to ensure quality is maintained. It should show how each program strives for continuous improvement. The QC audit team then reviews these assessments of new and existing programs to see if the process followed the university IQAP; experts review existing programs every eight years to ensure they are up to date, forward-looking and maintain excellence.

I will explain the audit process in more detail next month and explore what it may suggest about reviewing and reforming our churches.