Thursday 24 June 2010

Standardising and Measuring Graduate Abilities

Two large projects underway at the moment seem to indicate that quality of teaching may become increasingly important to regulators and universities.

The Australian Federal Government is introducing minimum standards for universities (and other bachelor degree providers) to develop in graduates in a project managed by ALTC discipline scholars. Standards are being developed in consultation with employers, professional bodies and higher education agencies on a discipline by discipline basis. In the Business area, Accounting standards are currently under discussion.
The standards will be administered by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which replaces the Australian University Qualities Agency (AUQA). More on TEQSA here: http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Policy/teqsa/Pages/Overview.aspx
And the Disciplines Setting Standards project here; http://www.altc.edu.au/standards/overview

The OECD currently measures the abilities of school leavers as a way to benchmark the performance of education systems among member countries, and now they are aiming to measure university graduate abilities in a project that may significantly change international ranking systems, now based on research outputs. The report in the Australian Higher education section gives more details about this:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/learning-is-as-simple-as-oecd/story-e6frgcjx-1225882950671

So where are libraries in all this? Are advocacy groups pushing for information literacy skills to be included as core graduate abilities by the ALTC? Will the OECD measure research skills or evaluation of information sources as core skills of graduates? If not, why not?

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