Chapter 4 The Interview Analysis and Discussion (A): Outcome-based
4.3 The issue of the HEEACT task transformation
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4.2 A brief summary of section 4.1
In this section, the interviewees’ opinions and discussions are concluded as follows: (1) more than half of the interviewees agree on outcomes-based evaluation or accreditation to make sure of student employment core competency. This is advantageous to international professional mobility. (2) almost half of the interviewees still think that input-based evaluation index can’t be wholly neglected.
The domestic traditional evaluation can’t be replaced by outcomes-based approach. If we wholly use outcomes-based approach, some problems are crucial. These include the directly assessment, analysis of the assessment results, committee members’
recognition of the outcomes-based assessment spirit without individual preconceived ideas. (3) outcomes-based evaluation or accreditation can be applied to every field, but they must draw up evaluation or accreditation indexes for features of the different fields. This index needs to bear every department to develop their features, and then to compare, assess, and improve themselves. Based on this spirit, they will change the traditional ranking system to the prolonged, improved recognition system.
4.3 The issue of the HEEACT task transformation
The present Higher Education evaluation is executed by HEEACT. As the evaluated unit continuously questions the evaluation result and MOE announces the act that it will recognize that the domestic and foreign professional organizations to go on with Higher Education evaluation or recognition, whether the single organization goes on with all the department evaluations becomes the issue worth discussing. If the future evaluation or accreditation can be carried out by other professional organizations, HEEACT will adjust its mission. Through the interview,
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domestic evaluations are executed by the official organizations. In the future, if the non-government organizations carry out the evaluation or accreditation, whether different standards cause controversies of the evaluation results will be also worth discussing in this interview.
The interviewees of the fifteen scholars and experts unanimously agree that HEEACT should transform their mission and become the higher rank monitor institutes. The following are the opinions:
As a matter of fact, the domestic evaluation is not completely responsible by HEEACT. University evaluations are conducted by HEEACT. Other technical universities’ evaluations are conducted by different units. I think that there should include more ways. HEEACT can give up the evaluation work and entrust according to the standards of the colleges and their professional and persuasive organizations. The standards of the evaluation of departments are too detailed. I think that the evaluations of colleges instead of programs are better. HEEACT should adopt their missions and play a more superior role, like CHEA of USA.
HEEACT should adopt the mission to recognize other evaluation institutes, do some research, and make the evaluation become more professional. The ultimate purpose is to make our own evaluation institutes have a better quality and cooperate with the foreign ones as much as we can. Accordingly, our institutes also can apply for the oversea recognition. This diverse act will connect our evaluation with international evaluations. (G)
Though most of us know that the domestic higher education evaluation is conducted by HEEACT, we do not necessarily understand that it is one of many professional evaluation units. The above interviewee mentions that HEEACT should
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transform itself into the role of CHEA. In fact, this view has been suggested by many other interviewees, including the experts of HEEACT.
Our HEEACT do not do all of the evaluations. For example, vocational evaluation is conducted by National Yunlin University of Science and Technology.
Besides, Taiwan Assessment and Evaluation Association is another corporation juridical organization. IEET proceeds to give the engineering accreditation, so we are one of many evaluation organizations. We may stand in the upper level organization of the evaluation, attest other evaluation organizations, and make the lower level evaluative organization actually operate the evaluation. We should slowly upgrade to become the intellectual warehouse unit. We are going to develop the evaluation research, including the evaluation method and the evaluation results. As CHEA does, we should transform ourselves rather than actually doing evaluation.(L)
Many interviewees of scholars and experts think that the actual operation of the evaluation business is very heavy task. If a single unit evaluates all the fields, then they will have very heavy workloads. Therefore, changing itself to the research unit and leading all the professional commissions to actual operation, HEEACT can share most of its load.
Like HEEACT, a single evaluation unit does not have enough professional personnel and must rely on professors of universities. However, do professors want to receive trainings? It happened that evaluators did not do what they were good at in terms of their profession. Now no one wants to discuss true spirit and connotation of the evaluation. These are important issues of the evaluation or the
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not understand the spirit of accreditation very well. This is not the problem of the evaluation or the accreditation agency, but because there are not enough people and what they do does not correspond to their position. (A)
How HEEACT changes its mission must go on with the domestic and overseas professional evaluation organizations’ policies, and to go on step by step. An interviewee of the high-ranking university official, another expert of the evaluation organization, and a scholar of the evaluation field clearly express their opinions as follows:
AACSB recognized programs can waive the evaluation by the Ministry of Education, for the foreign standard can be referred to, and even more advanced than us. We entrust AACSB to evaluation and this act is like MOE admitting AACSB to be good. As it has a list for the recognition of overseas educational degree, MOE recognizes qualified oversea evaluation organization. HEEACT is responsible for the principle. We make a comparison of the Legislative Yuan of Republic of China, which does not need to perform the law, because law-making and the administration need to be separated.(D)
I think that HEEACT should not stand on the first line but be the one which draws up the evaluation index and establishes the evaluation method. That is, he should do researches including the index, the method, the procedure, and the mechanism. After formulating the related method, it entrusts the method to the professional organizations to conduct the evaluations. (K)
MOE expects HEEACT to transform and slowly manage the domestic evaluation organizations. When the oversea evaluation organizations enter
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Taiwan, it may be a threshold. Transforming itself, it is very professional and international. In the future, HEEACT only evaluates the professional organizations which later evaluate universities. Then it falls back on the second line. At present, we have to wait. When there are more evaluation organizations, HEEACT will do so.(I)
Some interviewees of the experts and scholars thought that the original mission of HEEACT had been made clear. Even if it would transform itself, it still involved issues of the legal statuses of the foundations, board of directors, and public juridical persons. Though the consensus of the missions of HEEACT had been arrived at in the interviewees’ opinions, MOE had to clearly draw the policy up, for professional organizations could carry out educational evaluations. However, the ultimate application of the evaluation still needed the consideration of civil right of the government. The following listed three interviewees’ cautious opinions:
I thought that the original mission of HEEACT was very clear. If its major mission was replaced, it would be managed by a board of directors. I myself thought that its adjustment as either the monitoring unit or other units, should be decided by the board of directors. If it became a monitoring unit, what was the relationship between it and MOE? Did MOE have to monitor the domestic and oversea professional institutes or did HEEACT do, too? If they had different concepts, how to adjust was an issue. I thought that this should be proposed by the board of directors. This was very crucial, so I thought that it would be better if our foundation needed to communicate well with MOE. (J)
Our present HEEACT is in fact similar to public juridical persons, or public
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business is given execution by them, for coercive power of the government should not involve and the organization can become the professional evaluation one of America. HEEACT should carry out the accreditations which other institutes cannot do or are not qualified to do. I think that the present role and the objective of HEEACT are not clear or definite. It spares no effort to exert the present mission, so I do not think that it should adjust itself. (C)
The transformation of HEEACT itself depends on whether MOE can admit the proceedings of domestic and overseas professional evaluation agencies. The evaluation committee has to tell MOE how many evaluation plans of mine have been done, my training of the evaluation committee members, my effect, my accreditation procedure, and the requirement of proving the quality. HEEACT wants to transform itself. They find that evaluation is very tiring, for there are too many details to do in evaluations. If these things are not done, this foundation has to dismiss—its original purpose being to carry out the evaluation. (B)
This research also involved a policy-making expert’s opinion. From the response, I could understand that the country policy also supported HEEACT’s transformation.
According to the above-mentioned interviewees of the scholars and the experts, it was time when MOE recognized the domestic and overseas professional evaluation organizations.
Basically, I thought that HEEACT should have fallen behind rather than stand on the first line. Being unsuitable for the leading role of the evaluation, it should lead all of the evaluation system which makes the professional evaluation organization to carry out. Nowadays, the equal accreditation institutes should be established: those for Colleges of Law, Social Science, Medicine, Engineering,
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and Business. After that, HEEAC falls behind and monitors these units. Basically, I am waiting for the proper time, changing HEEACT into research institutes to investigate how to conduct evaluation. (O)
MOE may recognize more domestic and overseas professional evaluation or accreditation institutes and does not let only HEEACT to do evaluation. When departments choose professional institutes to receive the interview, will they choose institutes easy to pass and make the evaluation results unfair because of the different standards in all of the institutes? Concerning this, most of the interviewees did not have too many doubts. A senior scholar pointed out that if the purpose of the evaluation or the accreditation was to improve itself rather than to be given penalties, there would be no controversy of fairness.
I don’t think that there are problems of fairness in different professional institutes which were recognized to do higher education evaluation or accreditation. If the evaluation results were used to give penalties, there will be the problem of fairness. If the purpose of these evaluation results was to improve the quality of teaching, there was no problem of fairness. (G)
The diversified evaluations are also the developing tendencies. Different departments can look for the most suitable institutes to give their improvement opinions in professional developments. Credits of the different institutes certainly have to demand themselves and will receive the examination of the market mechanism. Low-standard institutes will be eliminated through competition by the market mechanism. The following listed two interviewees’ opinions:
There should be no fairness in choosing different evaluation units. The
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outside world will distinguish the evaluation unit’s reputation. Non-governmental circles clearly understand which aspect an evaluative unit A has a great emphasis on and the relatively low standard of evaluation unit B. Unless it is a case of cheating, I don’t think that there is a problem of fairness, for every evaluation has different key points, indexes, and social opinions. We welcome diversified evaluations. Different quality universities should adopt different standards or forms. For example, universities of Arts may not suit adopting the present HEEACT’s standard. (C)
Japan has four evaluation organizations. The market mechanism will eliminate them in accordance with universities or the public. The government should give the market mechanism to decide. For example, if a higher education university or a university of technology wants to apply for this evaluation of the organization, it must have its consideration of the standards. If it is called on because of the looser standard, certainly, it can get a very good result. However, the nurtured students are not well-qualified and will be eliminated by the market.
(K)
In this interview proves, almost half of the scholars and the experts doubt the fairness of the diversified evaluation or accreditation organizations. The domestic evaluation committee members might repeatedly act as ones of different professional evaluation organizations (like HEEACT and IEET), will they receive enough training and understand the spirits and standards of all the evaluation organizations? Do they play their good roles in carrying out their missions? A senior expert gave his opinions as follows:
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As for the problem of many evaluation organizations domestically, I didn’t know how many evaluation committee members are qualified. In the condition of the just and fair, committee members must avoid the conflict of interests.
Otherwise, why did we have so many committee members and establish many different evaluation units? (J)
The same evaluative standards of evaluation committee members were very important to the fairness of the evaluation result. Even if they are in the same evaluation organization, they have different opinions. The evaluation unit had many complaints against HEEACT’s evaluation results. An evaluated university director doubted the problem of fairness:
I thought that different evaluation organizations will lead to the problem of fairness. It likes when we examine the sanitation of the products, we are commenting which instrument was more precise than another one. In this way, I thought that there was a controversy. (F)
Because MOE recognized professional evaluation institutes, it admitted the overseas institutes, besides domestic ones, for carrying out evaluation or accreditation in Taiwan. There was an instance of AACSB accredited Colleges of Business. Did MOE actively recognize the act of the overseas institutes or ask their applications, like those of the domestic institutes. There problems of the overseas institutes which were not qualified, which did not understand or did not obey Taiwanese system were worries to us. An educational expert expressed his anxiety.
Another phenomenon is that in order to circumvent the domestic evaluative organization, universities look for organizations of other countries to evaluate.
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As a result, the domestic institutions of higher education became completely independent, not subject to the control of any Taiwanese organizations. Basically, there is a little danger because the object of education in Taiwan is to help Taiwanese children after all. It is also the use of taxpayers’ money. So I personally believe that you can accept the accreditation of the foreign organization, but you have to meet the standards of Taiwanese assessment body.
You have also to correspond to the requirements of social duty and accountability.
(L)
Even in the current system, there are national higher education evaluation inconsistencies. For example, as long as the recognition system of the University evaluation meets the accreditation requirements, universities can pass the evaluation and no longer get scores or ranking. But the vocational education systems of the technical universities and institutes of technology are using the ranking system in evaluation. The results show different ranks, as MOE’s basis for awarding grants.
Many controversies always exist in this inconsistency system. If more professional evaluation organizations have controversies in the recognition system and ranking system in the future, they will inevitably trouble the government and evaluation organization. One senior scholar stated the following views:
Now MOE also commissioned HEEACT to do the later higher education evaluation system plan. It will consider several questions. First, if the evaluation of the universities will combine with that of Universities of Technology. They used the same standards of the recognition and ranking. Universities of technology adopted the ranking system of the first, second, third or fourth class instead of the one of
“pass or fail.” So many people complained that because the university evaluation
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plan was applicable to universities and vocational colleges. Then, when the plan was executed, this university adopted the ranking and that university adopted the recognition, leading universities of technology to rebound. (B)