Achieving quality within funding constraints: the potential contribution of institutional research

Faced with an escalating number of competing demands on limited public funds, governments are giving more attention to achieving greater effectiveness and efficiency in the allocation and use of resources, as well as to maximising the achievement of goals and policies to which they assign high priority. This has engendered an increasing emphasis on public accountability, and on quality assurance as a vehicle for implementing accountability. This emphasis has been especially evident in the publicly funded tertiary education sector where government has shown particular interest in maximising desired outcomes within available resources. Such an operating environment has made the achievement of quality within funding constraints a crucial imperative for institutions of tertiary education.

In Australia the outcomes of the 1993 Quality Review cycle undertaken by the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education highlight this imperative. These outcomes suggest that higher levels of resources seem more likely to lead to high quality outcomes and performance. This heightens the challenge faced by institutions which are less well funded than those gaining recognition for particularly strong outcomes.

Institutional strategies for improving quality and the benefits of institutional research are both examined in this paper. Show less