Governing for Quality: A Study of the Governance of Quality in Norwegian Higher Education

Abstract

For many decades, quality has been a key policy issue in the governance of higher education at the national, regional and global levels. This concern is evident in Norway, where quality improvement has been one of the main policy goals concerning higher education, and the public authorities have implemented regulatory, financial and cultural oriented governance for this purpose. The research question in this thesis is “How is the quality of Norwegian higher education governed?”.The thesis aims to deepen our understanding of how dialogue-oriented multi-level “soft governance” of quality is developed and formulated at the national level, how it is negotiated between public authorities and higher education institutions (HEIs), and how this governance is perceived and acted on at the individual staff level. The findings of the thesis illustrate how public authorities incorporate both stakeholder and institutional priorities when developing governance for educational quality, while HEIs and academic staff maintain autonomy in their interpretations and implementations of this governance. The actors involved at these different levels appear to regard the diversity of approaches to the governance of the quality of higher education as legitimate, possibly because the governance does not interfere with core academic activities or affects institutional or individual academic autonomy. The thesis provides an account of how Norwegian academic institutions and staff actively utilise the governance process on educational quality, and the opportunities for dialogue that accompany it, to advance their strategic institutional and individual approaches to quality. The thesis explores how soft governance represents an opportunity for HEIs and academic staff to strengthen their autonomy. However, the efficacy of soft governance in steering quality in higher education is problematised.