Higher Eeducation Qquality Aassurance practices, challenges, opportunities, and prospects in a South African context

Sijekula Mbanga^*

• Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

With the increasing significance of the role of Hhigher Eeducation in national development, political stability, social cohesion, and economic progress the effectiveness and efficiency of this sector, including not just the quantity but the quality of its products and services stands to matter to all. Several factors continue to militate against the drive to offer quality educational experience to students in higher education institutions on the one hand, while on the other the pervasive audit culture and orientation that underpins quality assurance systems deters academics from genuinely embracing quality assurance, while limiting the real potential of the quality assurance system for achieving the intended educational outcomes. This article examines the challenges of and prospects for improved quality assurance practices in higher education with a view to maximize the ability of this sector to fulfil its role of contributing to national development and economic prosperity within and across nations. Quality assurance stakeholders in higher education, in particular students or their Representative Councils, government, study funders, parents should begin to take keen interest on quality assurance processes of institutions of higher learning as these have a bearing not only on the educational experience for a student but more on how that experience translates into the core attributes of the graduate, its 'graduatedness,' as is expressed in the economic worth of a qualification. Several incidents, in recent years, of students who came to know at the tail-end of their educational experience that the programmes they enrolled for are, by the way, neither accredited with the Council for Higher Education nor endorsed by the relevant professional bodies should be alarming. While higher education institutions are keen to ensure that their graduates are valuable assets to their prospective workplaces, the interface of education and work has long been seen to be problematic. An opportunity therefore exists for the design and implementation of a nation-wide programme review for housing at human settlement qualifications that are offered in the