International standards met in assessments
Over the past few weeks, there has been some discussion about quality assurance arrangements for the self-financing postsecondary education sector in Hong Kong.
It is worth noting that Hong Kong is one of the economies in Asia that has the longest experience with systematic quality assurance of post-secondary education.
Hong Kong has a dual system for quality assurance of selffinanced education. The Quality Assurance Council (QAC) of the University Grants Committee (UGC) conducts quality audits of publicly funded universities and the sub-degree operations of their self-financed arms.
The Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ) has undertaken the quality assurance of all other self-financing colleges in Hong Kong for the past 27 years.
Having two quality assurance bodies focused on different sectors in higher education is not unusual and the arrangement in Hong Kong is similar to that in other similar-sized jurisdictions, such as Singapore and New Zealand.
Academic programmes of self-financing post-secondary institutions are quality assured through HKCAAVQ accreditation and recognised under the Qualifications Framework, just as those offered by self-accrediting local universities and their self-financed arms. HKCAAVQ accredits learning programmes against a rigorous set of standards that have been benchmarked internationally. Like most other quality-assurance bodies around the world, HKCAAVQ uses peers to assess the programmes. The peers are local academics from Hong Kong universities and for degree programmes, peers also come from overseas institutions.