Mass Higher Education and the search for standards: reflections on some issues emerging from the ‘Graduate Standards Programme’

Abstract This paper sets out to explore the meanings and implications of academic standards in mass higher education. It attempts this in the context of the rapid expansion that has recently taken place in the UK. In doing so it draws on, and examines, selected themes that have emerged from the Higher Education Quality Council's ‘Graduate Standards Programme’ (though it does not attempt to give a full account of the findings of that work). It begins by discussing some of the implications of the ways in which UK HE has become a mass system. It then moves on to consider the roles of explicitness and professionalism in the establishment and assurance of academic standards, and their relationship to issues of public accountability. Having explored the possible tensions between professionalism and accountability, the paper questions whether it is helpful to frame discussions of standards in terms of a notional opposition between subjective and objective. It concludes by proposing another way of conceptualising standards, and discusses their possible future development in UK higher education.