From sickness to cure and further: construction of ‘quality’ in finnish higher education policy from the 1960s to the era of the Bologna process

This article looks into the discursive construction of ‘quality’ and ‘assessment’ in Finnish higher education policy from the 1960s onwards. The theoretical assumption is that the discourse of ‘quality’ not only describes the developments in Finnish higher education policy, but also produces and reproduces our views on that policy and on the motivating forces behind it. The methodology is text analytical, concentrating on the metaphors and actions connected with the words ‘quality’ and ‘assessment’. The data consists of printed text material by the Council of State, the Ministry of Education and the Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council.