Good Governance for Improving the Quality of Higher Education in Bangladesh

Good Governance for Improving the Quality
of Higher Education in Bangladesh
Professor Dr. Md. Nazrul Islam
Former Director, IQAC, SAU
Sylhet

Outcome of the Presentation
Definition of Governance in higher education
Concept and Dimension of Governance
Overview
Program Management
Organizational Setup
Documentation
Academic leadership and autonomy
Peer Observation and Feedback Process
Internal Quality Assurance Process
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Governance in higher education
Governance in higher education is the means by which
institutions for HE are formally organized and managed.
Simply, University governance is the way in which universities are
operated.
Governing structures for higher education are highly
differentiated throughout the world, but the different models
nonetheless share a common heritage.
Internationally, tertiary education includes private not-for-profit,
private for-profit, and public institutions governed by
differentiated structures of management.

GOOD GOVERNANCE IN HE -STATEMENTS
“Higher education governance is an issue that is strongly connected to the Council
of Europe’s key missions: protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of
law”(Council of Europe)
“According to the underlying ideas and assumptions of reform thinking,
universities and colleges should be externally controlled, theiractivities should be
formally evaluated, they should be held accountable for theirperformance, they
should be steered by market forces and not by governmental or state mechanisms,
they should be run by professional leaders and managers instead of by academic
primus-inter-pares (‘first among equals’), and they should be included as service
industries in regional and global trade agreements”. (Peter Maassen)

Cont.
“The governance of higher education in the 21st century needs to
develop a fusion of academic mission and executive capacity, rather
than substitute one for the other.”(OECD)
“Effective governance is a harmonious fusion of power and authority
and equal balance between trust and control where democratic,
autocratic and laissez faire management styles are addressed
according to the needs of a society and within the boundaries of active
legislation.”(Lela Maisuradze)

Cont.
Governance and management of post-secondary institutions becomes
even more diverse with the differences in defining the relationships
between higher and tertiary education
The issues are complicated by current debates over collegial and
shared forms of governance contrasted to corporate and business
forms of institutional governance

The concept of governance
 The way as public and private actors seek to solve university
organisational problems.
 It is related to collective control towards common institutional goals.
 Governance raises questions about who decides when on what.
 Governance is related to the institutional capacity to change and to
change properly and timely to institutional needs.

The five dimensions of governance
 State regulation. Regulation by directives; the government
prescribes behaviours.
 Stakeholder guidance. The government delegates certain powers to
other actors (intermediary bodies or university boards).
 Academic self-governance. The role of professional communities
within higher education systems.
 Managerial self-governance. The role of institutional leadership in
internal goal setting, regulation, and decision-making.
 Competition for resources. It takes place mostly not on “real”
markets but on “quasi-markets” where performance evaluations by
peers substitute customers.

Some Governance Principles
 Institutional autonomy
 Academic freedom
 Responsible social critic
 Ability to control destiny during time of change
 Subsidiarity
 Authority and responsibility pushed to lowest possible level
 Academic leadership provided with authority commensurate with
responsibility

Overview
The concept of governance in postsecondary education predominantly
refers to the internal structure, organization and management of
autonomous institutions.
The internal governance organization typically consists of a governing
board of directors), the university president (executive head, CEO) with
a team of administrative chancellors and staff, faculty senates,
academic deans, department chairs, and usually some form of
organization for student representation.
In the United States, state institution governing boards often
emphasize the concept of citizen governance in recognizing that board
members serve a civic role for the institution.

Cont.
As universities have become increasingly interdependent
with external forces, institutions are accountable to external
organizational relationships such as local and federal
governments, equally in managing business and corporate
relationships.
Governance is sometimes defined at difference to the internal
management of institutions.
Throughout the world, many national, state and local
governments have begun to establish coordinating and
governing boards as both buffer and bridge to coordinate
governance and institutional management.

Cont.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was the first
organization to formulate a statement on the governance of higher education
based on principles of democratic values and participation
The AAUP published its first "Statement on Government of Colleges and
Universities" in 1920, “emphasizing the importance of faculty involvement in
personnel decisions, selection of administrators, preparation of the budget, and
determination of educational policies.
Refinements to the statement were introduced in subsequent years, culminating
in the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.
The statement concerns general education policy and internal operations with
an overview of the formal structures for organization and management. In
process and structure, the meaning with the end result is an organizational
philosophy for shared governance in higher education.

Cont.
In the face of dramatic changes over recent decades in higher
education landscape governance has become a crucial issue in
quality assurance in higher education.
Governance at university encompasses the organizational
structures, legislative framework and processes through which,
policies and programs are developed, managed and delivered.
Governance facilitates the achievement of the stated mission and
objectives of the university.

Cont.
The central administration and statutory bodies like the Vice
Chancellor, Board of Trustees, Syndicate, and Academic Council are
the powerful actors in university’s governance system.
The players involved in ensuring the governance at the university
includes all the administrative layers from top management to the
program level management.

Some of the areas of governance at the university include the
following but not limited to:
Mission and objectives: Mission and objectives of an institution or
program offering entity describe the purposes and
stakeholders of the institution and program offering entity.
Mission and objectives are defined in respect of national relevance
incompliance with the legal requirements, QA requirements and
external reference standards.
Intended learning outcomes must satisfy the mission and objectives
of the program and institution
Cont.

Program Management
Management:
Good governance and quality assurance depends on the integrated
approach of management by the statutory bodies and individual units
of the university.
It needs commitment, sense of responsibility, team work, collaboration
and coordination among the top management, academic,
administrative and support units of the university.
At the beginning of any Program, the Department or entity provides
student handbook containing Department or entity overview, vision,
mission, program description, academic syllabus, and methods of
assessment of the students.

Cont.
Example:
For CSE Program: There are two terms or semester (I and II) in an academic
year. The duration of each term is 24 weeks, which are used as follows:
(i) Classes for 18 weeks;
(ii) Preparatory leave before final examination for 2 weeks;
(iii) Final examination for 2 weeks duration; and
(iv) 2 weeks for term break before the start of next term.
Before start of each term, the Head of Department asks for course choice to the
teachers in a course choice form in order to select course teachers for
theoretical and Laboratory courses.
After getting course choice form, the Head of this Department usually
summarizes and calculates course load of each teacher.

Cont.
Then, he distributes both theoretical and Laboratory courses of this
term among the teachers. In addition, he also selects Course Co-
coordinator for respective semester among existing faculty members in
this Department.
The Course Co-coordinator are responsible to monitor course
registration of the students at the beginning of each term.
They play the mentoring role for the students; the students can come to
him and discuss their problems.
In addition, they are also responsible to disseminate all types of
academic circulars among the students. When the academic term is
going on, the course teacher works as a course administrator.

Cont.
The Controller of Examination Office of the university is
responsible to organize final exam of the term.
They send exam dates to the Department and the class teachers
finalize the exam schedule by involving students. The students can
prefer their own schedule.
The Controller of Examination Office is also responsible to invite
faculty members or question setters to set questions for the exam.
The question-setter sets questions and submits to the Head of the
Department of entity in sealed envelope.

Cont.
Before the examination, the Head of Department develops a panel of
moderators by involving internal and external members in order to
modify and finalize the question papers of the courses.
After evaluation, the marks are submitted to the chairman of the
exam committee for respective program (who is selected by the Head
of the discipline) and a copy to the controller of examination.
The chairman of the exam committee assigns two faculty members
for each batch for preparing the final result. The result of each batch
is published through the controller of the examination.

Organizational Setup
Organizational Setup: The University must have an organizational
structure and organizational units with defined responsibilities
in compliance with the legal framework under which the
university is established.

Cont.
The institution/program offering entity must review and ratify the policies and
procedures periodically with an objective of further improvement.
Code of conduct for the students and code of conduct for staff members
and disciplinary rules and regulations are needed to be well defined and
communicated.
Accountability & Transparency: Accountability and transparency are very
critical to develop stakeholder's confidence and trust. It needs proper
documentation and access to information relating to all aspects of
management of academic programs and the university.
Website: The University must have a well-designed website, which will
contain all sorts of information of the university and programs with easy
access to the stakeholders.

Accountability & Transparency
Accountability: government is able and willing to show the extent to which its
actions and decisions are consistent with clearly-defined and agreed-upon
objectives.
Transparency: government actions, decisions and decision-making processes are
open to an appropriate level of scrutiny by others parts of government, civil society
and, in some instances, outside institutions and governments.
Efficiency and effectiveness: government strives to produce quality public outputs,
including services delivered to citizens, at the best cost, and ensures that outputs
meet the original intentions of policymakers.
Forward vision: government is able to anticipate future problems and issues based
on current data and trends and develop policies that take into account future costs
and anticipated changes (e.g. demographic, economic, environmental, etc.).
Rule of law: government enforces equally transparent laws, regulations and codes

Documentation
Documentation at all levels of university administration from central to
individual faculty members.
A student handbook containing mission, objectives, graduate profile,
academic calendar, rules, regulations and program related information
in details.
Academic Documentation The programs should have a documented
admission criterion, which include the minimum entry requirements,
the procedure for application and the evaluation of student's marks at
different levels in the admission test.
These rules are to be advertised in local and national newspapers
before the admission test every year.

Cont.
The list of students, after completion of the admission process, is to be
forwarded to the Registrar office for registration in the specific program and the
registration number is to be issued.
All the programs offered by the department/entity should follow a well-defined
set of rules. The rules are to be documented and preserved.
Some of the rules regarding course curriculum, course outline, and lesson plan,
evaluation criteria, grading scheme, attendance etc. are to be provided in
advanced to the students as booklet during orientation.

Cont.
Students are needed to be evaluated through attendance, continuous
assessments(Formative and Summative), sessional and final examinations at
the end of each semester.
The Research work/project is to be done in the final semester and contributes
significantly towards the student's evaluation for the program.
Only qualified students in each semester are to be allowed to join the next
semester. All the attendance sheet, marks and evaluations are needed to be
documented and preserved by the department.

Cont.
All academics decisions should make in a formal meeting with all the faculty
members unanimously and the decisions are needed to be documented and
noticed to the concerned parties. Any decisions made by the authority is to be
informed to the faculty members through the Head.
A decision made by the authority regarding a particular academic or non-
academic member of the discipline, it is needed to notify to him/her in written
notice and a copy is preserved in his/her personal file.
For the sake of fairness and transparency every documents concerning student's
evaluation (i.e., marks, answer scripts, results etc.) are to be signed by respective
faculty members and then it is to be preserved.

Academic leadership and autonomy
Academic leadership and autonomy:At this age of globalization
and knowledge economy higher education institutions are going
through many changes. To manage these changes favorably,
increasing emphasis is being placed on good governance
strengthening institutional leadership and greater administrative
autonomy.

Cont.
Leadership, institutional autonomy and proper exercise of academic
freedom have immense effect on the achievement of organizational
mission and objectives. In order to be responsive to the emerging
changes and needs universities and the academic units of the
university must have effective institutional leadership and sufficient
autonomy.
The academic leaders and the faculty members must be judicious and
guided by the values of quality assurance.

 Research,
Extremely important and should be on everyone's radar
Ability to do good research work and possession of research vision
Talent hunt and ability to collaborate
 Educational( Faculty), Innovation
Technology based teaching and learning
Integration of research and teaching
 And administrative, with some positions combining two or all three types
Managerial skills typically involves hiring (and sometimes firing),
resource allocation, alumni engagement and managing the changing
and complex roles of faculty, staff and students.
Three Types of HE Leadership

Principles of leadership
 Conflicting Goals, Ambiguous Aims and ever changing
boundaries ( Gross & Grambsch, 1974 and Cohen and
March, 1974)
 Importance of being Mission Driven – broad, overall long
term purpose of the institution ( Welzenbach, 1982)
 Adjusting to an Ever-Changing Environment ( Chait, Ryan
and Talyor, 2005)
 Importance of Democratic Partnerships in Advancing the
Academy – “inextricably bound” (Kerr, 1964)

Functions of Leader
Leadership is at the core of Performance Management. Following are
the functions of a leader:
• Strategic: Define vision or goal, strategize to overcome constraints
and exploit strengths, put resources to best use, use performance
data in decision making (University of Mumbai, St. Xavier’s Colleges)
• Integrative: Integrate separate units, individuals and teams towards
achievement of goals. Planning and communication are important.
(University of Calcutta)
• Transformational: Create new vision. Transform organization to
achieve vision. Transform organizations stuck in the channel of
inertia. Get people out of their comfort zone and inspire confidence.
(University of Hyderabad, Presidency University)

Peer Observation and Feedback Process
Stakeholder's Feedback:
Active role of major stakeholders, particularly employers and students, in
higher education process is highly recognized for quality assurance.
In terms of designing curriculum, teaching learning methods and
assessment procedure stakeholders should have the opportunity to place
their opinion on the issues what the student should want to learn, and how
they should learn.
More especially, stakeholders must be offered the opportunity to provide
the feedback regarding the effectiveness of academic programs, teaching
learning practices and overall performance of the institution.
Such provision will make the employers aware about the outcomes of
university industry collaboration and their strategic roles to human capital
development for mutual benefits.

Cont.
At the same time students will be more aware of career requirements,
what they are doing and why they are doing it in terms of academic
preparation. It can be an effective way of motivating students to
learning and attainment of learning objectives and making students
accountable as well.
Systematic feedback process could help to maintain sound academic
environment.
Stakeholder’s opinion survey under self-assessment exercise explores
many useful comments and suggestions, which are very critical to
quality assurance in education.
Systematic approach to collect and due response to their ideas,
evaluation and comments would help the university and program
offering entities to make the QA practices more acceptable, affordable
and logical.

Cont.
Management of stakeholder’s feedback to get useful insights
for the purpose of improvement in all aspects of teaching
learning and research.
All the academic activities are also monitored by the academic
council which ensures the completion of each program
according to the ordinance and in stipulated time.
The students are always under the care of faculty members.
During a course, the students are evaluated through three
continuous assessments.

Cont.
The students get to check his/her answer scripts with the course
instructor and correct his/her short comings.
If a student is irregular in the course, he/she is warned verbally.
Moreover, the students are also under the supervision of the
department of student affairs which is under the control of a director.
For any co-curricular activities, the students have to take consent from
the director of student affairs. The department of student affairs
confirms the discipline of the students.

Internal Quality Assurance Process
The HEI should have to make a policy and associated procedures for the
assurance of the quality and standards of their academic programs.
Recently, 79 Universities(Private and Public) of Bangladesh has
established the Institutional Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) with an
objective of developing and implementing a strategy for the continuous
enhancement of quality in HE.
In order to develop and implement internal quality assurance process in
each Department or entity , each University Quality Assurance Cell has
first started to execute quality assurance assessment in different
Departments/Entities.

Cont.
Under guidance of IQAC, all eligible Departments or entities has performed
an internal quality assurance assessment by involving faculty members’
responses and other relevant stakeholders at program level first and than
institutional level.
To ensure quality internally, the Head of the entity regularly follows up the
routine activities. The current status of the department/entity is discussed at
regular faculty meetings and based on the discussion an action plan is to be
prepared by SAC.

Cont.
The Head then assigns tasks from the plan to certain faculty members. The
action plan is to be assessed by the faculty members in later meetings and
updated if required. An action plan is to be marked completed by the Head
once the target is achieved.
The data collection from five stakeholders on the basis of nine criteria and
SWOT analysis are to be done to find out the key areas for improvement.
The EPRR on the basis of their(EPRT) visit at HEI and SAR prepared by
respective SAC are to be needed for designing PSAIP for continuous
improvement of the quality of HE in Bangladesh.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
To define key performance indicators it is essential for academic institutions to act
as a source of motivation and means to ensure accountability of faculties as well as
non-academic staffs. All the entities of the respective university has to follow the
following key performance indicators:
Academic calendar for each semester is to be maintained properly
During semester time, course teachers should take their classes regularly and for 3
credit theory courses, teachers should take at least 48-54 classes; in case of 2 credit
theory courses, course teachers should take 32-36 classes. For each practical course,
teachers must take one 2 hours class in a week.
Every course teacher has to develop course outline where he/she usually develops
course aim and objectives, learning outcomes, lesson plans, assessment procedures,
inductive readings/references and schedule for class test.

Cont.
 Class tests and assignments assessment should be evaluated on time and
circulated among the students before final examination.
Term final exam results should be published within a month.
Each course teacher has to maintain academic documentations (such as class
attendance, continuous assessment answer scripts, marks, final exam questions,
answer scripts, final exam results and students’ progress) properly.
The faculty/teachers should publish journal articles and participate in conferences
regularly.
The faculty/teachers should apply for research grants from home and abroad to
conduct research and dissemination the outcome of the research among the
students and faculties.

Conclusion
• Without a change in the governance and leadership of their
institutions and system, Bangladesh will not succeed to have
enough strong universities

Good Governance for Improving the Quality of Higher Education in Bangladesh

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Good Governance for Improving the Quality of Higher Education in Bangladesh

Similar to Good Governance for Improving the Quality of Higher Education in Bangladesh (20)

More from Md. Nazrul Islam

More from Md. Nazrul Islam (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Good Governance for Improving the Quality of Higher Education in Bangladesh