Policymakers’ use of quality as discursive tool in legitimizing higher education policymaking - Delprojekt i PIQUED: Pathways to Improve Quality in Higher Education

The project investigates how policymakers in higher education use quality as a discursive tool to legitimize policy reforms. As empty signifier, quality lacks a stable meaning due to its many possible, different interpretations, but is instead filled with value: all actors agree that quality is a good thing, but quality means different things to different actors in different contexts. We analyze the parliamentary introduction of seven key policy reforms in Danish higher education since 2003 and find that policymakers invoke quality argumentatively both as a tool to “future-proof” higher education and as a means to increase the labor market relevance of higher education. We then investigate which concrete policy goals policymakers try to achieve by drawing on policy and which policy designs quality is used to legitimize in order to understand how quality discourses impact political processes and results in higher education policy.

Delprojekt i PIQUED: Pathways to Improve Quality in Higher Education
The project examines how degree programme quality is conceptualised and how it is approached through degree programme quality initiatives. Based on international research, existing quality indicators and an in-depth empirical collection of data from the stakeholders of universities, university colleges and academy profession degree programmes, the project aims to identify the factors that contribute to increasing degree programme quality.
The overall aim of the PIQUED project is to establish inclusive, context-sensitive evidence about pathways for improving the quality of Danish higher education degree programmes.