Experience And Enlightenment Of Third Party Evaluation Mechanism Of Higher Education In Britain

As an important part of higher education quality assessment and guarantee system,the third-party evaluation has become increasingly important in the situation of the separation of management,implementation and assessment in china.The establishment of a perfect third-party evaluation operation mechanism can not only improve the current evaluation system in china,but also is a key measure to improve the quality of higher education.The third-party evaluation of higher education in Britain has formed a mature and exemplary operating mechanism.Since the early 20 th century,in order to ensure the quality of higher education,the government has started to cultivate new higher education institutions and specialized institutions have been responsible for the institutions.Therefore,the University Grant Committee,as the first third-party institution in the UK,came into being to undertake the quality assessment of new institutions.Until 1997,the third-party evaluation agency in the UK has gradually evolved from the original attached evaluation work into a systematic and professional evaluation organization--the Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency,which uniformly undertakes the quality assessment of universities in the UK.At the same time,it formed a relatively mature third-party evaluation mechanism,which has formed a more standardized operating mechanism in the aspects of legal security,financial support and supervision of the organization.This ensures the third-party evaluation work to be carried out in a more professional and systematic way.It also maintains the leading position of British higher education in the world while ensuring the higher education quality.This paper adopts three research methods: historical research,literature research and case study,and takes the new public management theory as the logical starting point of the study,which illustrates the inevitability and rationality of third-party institutions’ involvement in the quality assurance system of British higher education.Its evolution is constantly updated with the reform of the higher education system.This study selects QAA as a case and starts with the external guarantee mechanism and internal operation mechanism of the institution respectively.The external guarantee involves legislative and financial guarantee.The internal operation involves three parts: subject review,institution review and institution audit.It is concluded that the operation of the third-party evaluation mechanism of higher education in the UK has the following advantages.Firstly,the third-party evaluation of higher education in the UK has achieved legal basis and improved legal guarantee.Secondly,there is a high level of specialization among evaluators and assessment procedures,which ensures the professionalism and authority of QAA.Thirdly,in the evaluation process,students’ participation can be effectively implemented and students’ status in the evaluation can be valued.Fourthly,the evaluation unit accepts external supervision from multiple subjects such as society,government as well as internal supervision and accountability.On the basis of critically learning from the successful experience of the third-party evaluation mechanism of higher education quality in Britain,and combining with the specific problems existing in the third-party evaluation of our country,such as the lack of legal status,the poor market competitiveness,and the vacancy of supervision over agencies,this paper puts forward some concrete measures to improve the third-party evaluation mechanism of higher education in China: In the aspect of external guarantee,firstly,the legal status should be established.Secondly,the market environment should be optimized.In terms of internal operation,the first step is to strengthen the top-level design and improve the professional level.The second step is to attach importance to the role of students in evaluation.Finally,it should attach importance to the supervision and accountability of the third-party evaluation agencies.