Benchmarking the quality of teaching and research at Dutch universities

Gerard Maas, together with Frans Dijkstra and Jon Tienstra of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, has examined the quality of teaching and research at Dutch universities, using a benchmark he co-developed while working as a Senior Policy Advisor with the Policy Analysis and Information Section of the Directorate for University Education.

Benchmarking may help monitor and improve the quality of teaching and research at institutes of higher education, which is an issue of growing importance. Many indicators of research and teaching performance in Dutch universities are available. For instance, quality scores from peer reviews and from student surveys, student success rates, and citation scores. The problem lies with selecting appropriate ones and, subsequently, with concise presentation of the information.

On the basis of a selection of indicators, the authors constructed quality profiles of institutions, showing the difference between the scores of an institution and the average scores of all institutions. The results show remarkable differences: some universities score high on research performance, others have high scores on teaching performance or on student success rates or on student satisfaction. Such differences can be explained and may serve as starting point for performance improvement efforts.

Quality enhancement and assessment are important tasks for managers of all tertiary educational institutions. The benchmarking method developed by the authors can yield insights that are important for managers in institutes of higher education and researcher in planning interventions. The principal lesson is that there is no one best way to measure research and teaching quality. The implication is that the methodology should be further developed and used in interaction with the field.

Background Materials

A benchmark of quality of teaching and research at Dutch universities. Paper by Dijkstra, Frans IJ., Jon T. Tienstra, and Gerard C. Maas, presented at the 24th Annual Forum of the European Association for Institutional Research, September 8-11, 2002, Prague, Czech Republic.(Read Only).

Additional information and materials on this and related topics available from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the European Foundation for Quality Management, and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations' website on Benchmarking in the Public Sector, a collection of online summaries of many benchmarking activities carried out in the Dutch public sector.

Also of interest may be the European Centre for Strategic Management of Universities, the Society for Research into Higher Education, and the websites of Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities, the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education and the European Network for Quality Assurance.

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