Measuring the Quality of Higher Education: linking teaching quality measures at the delivery level to administrative measures at the university level

There are a several lenses through which quality in higher education can be viewed. One views quality improvement at the macro or university level, another focuses at the micro or educational-delivery level. One sees quality assessment as an administrative ‘check-off’, the other sees quality as a continuous improvement in educational delivery. One values quantitative measures to demonstrate quality, the other values qualitative measures. This paper argues that what is needed is integration such that quality improvements at the educational-delivery level complement and are reflected at the university level with qualitative information from the decentralised units of the university, adding a fullness to quantitative data collected at the central level. This is discussed in the context of requirements of management education for a knowledge economy. A case study of how quality can be measured at the educational delivery level is presented to explore this issue.