Standardising Mediocrity: The Use of Student Evaluations to Measure Quality Assurance in Australian Universities

Abstract

Unsophisticated Likert scale type data collected from students at the end of each unit in their degree program is being used inappropriately by senior managers in Australian universities to measure the "quality" of academic programs. Data such as this has the potential to undermine academic standards and the rigour of curriculum design and assessment tasks by entrenching standards based on the fact that designing and delivering "likeable" and "easy" teaching content to students is a measure of the quality of the unit content. Using such data as a way in which senior managers and Heads of Schools in universities then censure or reward individual academics further reinforces mediocrity in an industry sector that is already buried in bureaucratic processes forced upon it by both state and federal governments.