Abstract
The article analyses the role of peer review within broader external quality assurance schemes. Based on an analytical framework emphasising that modern quality assurance schemes are designed as a balancing act between standardised guidelines and professional judgement, the article uses data from a recent evaluation of NOKUT, the Norwegian Quality Assurance Agency, to investigate whether and how the peer review process has maintained its central role in quality assurance, not least with respect to promoting excellence and diversity. The findings indicate that what is presented as judgements based on peer expertise, turn out to be a rather technical process in which pre-defined rigid criteria and standards are imperative. In the conclusion, the role of peer review is discussed in relation to developments in European higher education.
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Notes
On the other hand, peer review is sometimes accused of being conservative and stifling innovativeness as assessments are done by well-established experts rejecting ideas differing from their own, i.e. counteracting diversity (as emphasised by the literature referred to and by Langfeldt 2002, p. 39).
Regulations no. 1040 of 8 September 2005 from the Ministry of Education and Research: Regulations governing accreditation, evaluation and approval pursuant to the Norwegian Universities and University Colleges Act.
E.g. for university accreditation, five accredited Master Programmes and PhD programmes in four different subject areas are required.
In addition to national reaccreditations there are national evaluations of study programmes with no formal link to the accreditation system. Both the reaccreditations and evaluations are performed by NOKUT.
NOU 2008:3. Sett under ett. Ny struktur i høyere utdanning. Oslo: Norges offentlige utredninger. ISBN 978-82-583-0953-3. (NOU = Official Norwegian Reports accessible at http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dok/NOUer).
Moreover, teaching staff may be counted in different ways, and while NOKUT tries to be consistent and gives detailed instructions to the evaluations panels, the institutions struggled to find out whether they fulfilled the criterion. There is no shared understanding about how staff qualifications ought to be assessed, and NOKUT has not yet been able to settle on criteria for assessing staff qualifications that the evaluees find meaningful and adequate.
Cole et al. 1981 and Ceci and Peters 1982 are among the classics here, studying inter-reviewer reliability in the review of grant proposals and journal publications. The kind of quasi-experimental design employed in these classic studies is difficult to use when studying expert panel versions of peer review (as practiced by NOKUT), but reviewer disagreement is generally confirmed also in studies of expert panel evaluations (Langfeldt 2002).
On the other hand, the panel may very well consist of members with very different opinions without any evidence of such disagreements in the conclusions. In cases of tacit disagreement—or more explicit but concealed compromises—the conclusions may consist of vague assessments (Langfeldt 2002), and consequently promoting neither excellence nor diversity.
Or have conflicts of interest.
Regulations Relating to Standards and Criteria for Accreditation of Programme of Study and Criteria for Accreditation of Institutions in Norwegian Higher Education, NOKUT 2006, http://www.nokut.no/sw482.asp.
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Langfeldt, L., Stensaker, B., Harvey, L. et al. The role of peer review in Norwegian quality assurance: potential consequences for excellence and diversity. High Educ 59, 391–405 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9255-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9255-4