Extractadas del recién publicado Education Today 2013: THE OECD PERSPECTIVE, que puede bajarse completo aquí:

Education Today 2013 (3,7 MB).

Policy directions

While recognising differences of culture and approach in national tertiary education systems,
there are a number of common main elements that underpin sound planning and policy
making:

• Develop and articulate a vision for tertiary education: Countries should as a priority
develop a comprehensive and coherent vision for the future of tertiary education, to guide
the medium- and long-term in harmony with national social and economic objectives.
Ideally, it should result from a systematic review and entail a clear statement of strategic
aims.
• Establish sound instruments for steering towards and implementing that vision: Tertiary
education authorities need to develop their review and monitoring capacity for the system
as a whole as opposed to the standard instruments of institutional administration. Within
the overall vision, steering instruments need to establish a balance between institutional
autonomy and public accountability. Allowing the play of student choice can improve
quality and efficiency.
• Strengthen the ability of institutions to align with the national tertiary education
strategy: Institutions should be encouraged to develop an outward focus, including via
external representation on their governing bodies, and be required to establish strategic
plans. The national policy framework should give institutions the means to manage their
wider responsibilities effectively.

Lessons drawn from OECD review about the implementation of tertiary education reforms
suggest that it should:

• Recognise the different viewpoints of stakeholders through iterative policy development.
• Allow for bottom-up initiatives to come forward as proposals by independent committees.
• Establish ad-hoc independent committees to initiate tertiary education reforms and
involve stakeholders.
• Use pilots and experimentation.
• Favour incremental reforms over comprehensive overhauls unless there is wide public
support for change.
• Avoid reforms with concentrated costs and diffused benefits.
• Identify potential losers from tertiary education reform and build in compensatory
mechanisms.
• Create conditions for and support the successful implementation of reforms.
• Ensure communication about the benefits of reform and the costs of inaction.
• Implement the full package of policy proposals.

Among the principles and pointers for quality assurance in tertiary education, in addition to
the general requisites of building the focus on student outcomes and the capacity for quality
assurance are:

• Ensure that quality assurance serves both improvement and accountability purposes,
and more generally make sure it is consistent with the goals of tertiary education.
• Combine internal and external mechanisms for quality assurance.
• Make stakeholders visible in the evaluation procedures – students, graduates and
employers.
• Enhance the international comparability of the quality assurance framework.

Among the main principles guiding funding strategies in tertiary education, beyond ensuring
that they promote the wider goals and societal benefit, are:

• Use cost-sharing between the state and students as the principle to shape the sector’s
funding: There is need for public subsidies to tertiary education regardless of the sector of
provision, but also for charging tuition fees to students, especially if limited public funds
would ration student numbers, jeopardise spending levels per student, or restrict financial
support for the disadvantaged.
• Make institutional funding to teaching formula-driven: The criteria for the distribution of
funds to institutions need to be clear, using transparent formulae which shield allocation
decisions from political pressures, while tailoring incentives to shape institutional plans
towards national goals.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         • Improve cost-effectiveness: Inefficiencies should be addressed through such means as:
linking funding more closely to graduation rates, reducing public subsidies for those who
stay too long in their studies; eliminating some duplicated programmes; rationalising
low- or declining-enrolment programmes; increasing the use of shared facilities; and
expanding student mobility across institutions.
• Back the overall funding approach with a comprehensive student support system: A
mixed system of grants and loans assists students in covering tuition and living costs,
alleviating excessive hours in paid work or disproportionate reliance on family support. In
many countries student support needs to be expanded and diversified.

The OECD in close cooperation with UNESCO published a set of international Guidelines for
Quality Provision in Cross-border Higher Education in 2005 recommending actions for different
stakeholders. For governments, it is recommended that they:
• Establish or encourage the establishment of a comprehensive, fair and transparent
system of registration or licensing for cross-border higher education providers wishing
to operate in their territory.
• Establish or encourage the establishment of a comprehensive capacity for reliable
quality assurance and accreditation of cross-border higher education provision.
• Consult and co-ordinate amongst the various competent bodies for quality assurance
and accreditation, both nationally and internationally.
• Provide accurate, reliable and easily accessible information on the criteria and standards
for registration, licensure, quality assurance and accreditation of cross-border higher
education, their consequences on the funding of students, institutions or programmes
where applicable, and their voluntary or mandatory nature.
• Consider becoming party to, and contribute to, the development and/or updating of
the appropriate UNESCO regional conventions on recognition of qualifications, and
establish national information centres as stipulated by the conventions.
• Where appropriate develop or encourage bilateral or multilateral recognition
agreements, facilitating the recognition or equivalence of each country’s qualifications
based on the procedures and criteria included in mutual agreements.
• Contribute to efforts to improve the accessibility at the international level of up-to-date,
accurate and comprehensive information on recognised higher education institutions/
providers.

Government has a key role to play in joining up a wide range of policies and in creating
supportive environments to promote the regional role of higher education institutions.
These include to:
• Create more “joined up” decision making (finance, education, science and technology,
and industry ministries, etc.) to co-ordinate decisions on priorities and strategies in
regional development.
• Make regional engagement and its agenda for economic, social and cultural
development explicit in higher education legislation and mission strategies.
• Develop indicators and monitor outcomes to assess the impact of higher education
institutions on regional performance, and encourage their participation in regional
governance structures.
• Provide a supportive regulatory, tax and accountability environment for universityenterprise
co-operation: what is now active regional engagement in particularly forwardlooking
and entrepreneurial institutions should become more widespread across the
sector.

Beyond safeguarding high-quality pathway opportunities to tertiary education,
countries need to improve transition to work opportunities: Access to tertiary education
does not necessarily lead to employment. Optimising the transition to employment
presupposes that the vocational education and training initiatives undertaken at secondary
level to improve the employability of disabled young adults offer a real educational
alternative. Tertiary education institutions need to attach the same importance to the
professional future of students with disabilities as they do for other students, and they
should create sufficiently deep-rooted and formalised links with the economic sphere.
Active employment policies should encourage firms to recruit workers with disabilities,
while admissions and support services for students with disabilities should give greater
attention to access to employment and work closely with agencies that assist with job
searches or find jobs for persons with disabilities.

A recent study on institution-wide quality teaching policies of higher education institutions
has identified a number of routes and levers for improving the quality of teaching.
• Raise awareness of quality teaching: Institutions play the key role in fostering quality
teaching as national regulations rarely require or prompt academics to be trained in
pedagogy or to upgrade their educational competences over their professional lives.
• Develop excellent teachers: This requires well-designed professional development for
individual teachers, but also deans, heads of programmes and other team leaders who are
drivers of change. There needs to be a collaborative reflection on the quality of teaching
and learning that is aligned with university values, identity and faculty expectations.
• Engage students: Students have enormous capacity to leverage quality provided they
are given the right tools and clarity about the objectives of their engagement. Student
engagement is most powerful as a driver of quality teaching when it involves dialogue,
and not only information on the student’s experience.
• Build organisations for change and teaching leadership: Institutions are complex
adaptive systems with no single pathway to achieve real teaching quality improvements.
Many in an institution can be change agents provided they understand the change
process and are committed to raising teaching quality. Effective leadership is crucial to
quality improvement and shaping the institution’s quality culture.
• Align institutional policies to foster quality teaching: Improvements in teaching quality
can be achieved more rapidly and cost-effectively if approached collectively, underpinned
by well-aligned institutional policies. Five areas stand out for institutional alignment to
support policy teaching: human resources; information and computing technology;
learning environments; student support; and internationalisation.