Defining Quality in a Fragmented Higher Education Landscape: Challenges, Frameworks, and Futures

The modern-day higher education landscape is characterized by an increased role of fragmentation and change brought by massification, privatization, the digital revolution, the development of transnational education, and the proliferation of different forms of institutions and credentials for higher education globally. In this complex scenario, the notion of ‘quality’ is itself highly contentious as the traditional approaches to the assurance and measurement of quality fail to account for the different goals and contexts associated with different stakeholders in higher education. Starting with an evaluation of how the notion of ‘quality’ in higher education is conceptualized and ascertained in this highly fragmented and complex higher education context, this chapter critically explores the leading discourses associated with quality and points to the contradictions associated with standardization and contextuality, accountability and autonomy, and equity and excellence, as associated with higher education today. Using international best practices and approaches to quality from leading higher education institutions globally, this chapter contends and asserts that there is an increased focus on the measurement and standardization of ‘quality’ when, in fact, there is an inability to recognize different dimensions and values of higher education associated with pedagogical innovation and social and ethical values of continuity, rather than an increased focus associated with different dimensions associated with student diversity and diversity associated with different forms and modes associated with contemporary higher education today.