What is behind Quality Assurance in Education Field?

Quality Assurance has been a well defined mechansim in all sorts of commerical industry. In manufacturing, there is normally a Quality Assurance Team which consists of Technical Staff and Experienced Management whom can detect defects or poorly manufactured goods during random sample inspections. In education field, what used to exist in our mind in quality control was that we trusted the reputation of an educational institution so we chose it to puruse our studies. Then, whom perform the quality control process for us? The management, the administrative staff or the teaching  staff?

To answer this question, let's imagine the course/programme offered by an educational institution as a product marketed for sale at the open market, the customers, the government, the market owner the agents, if any, and the product producers are all responsible for completing the task because they all lies in the vertical relationship during the whole process upon the production of a product. Although to the customers, the product may only mean a moment of enjoyment or entertainment, the value added to the brand and given to the cutomers are beyond the extrinsic value one should observe from the product. Similar to education field, the course/programme does not mean what the title of course/programme suggests but the whole learning process which the customers and the programme offerers expect BEFORE the course/programme actually opens. To the government and the industries that require high quality human resources, they don't simply observe the title of course/programme as printed on the students' reports, but the learning outcomes students acheive after all. This is the basic idea of Quality Assurance in Education Field.

日本迷失的二十年

日本迷失的二十年


〔廉價的中產式商品〕
 集團式酒店在各車站旁快速擴充，他們標榜的是價廉物美並打家庭式的温情牌以吸納商界人士的短暫住宿；以個人經濟模式經營的酒店及旅館遭受淘汰的命運，即使是旅遊旺季，生意並不樂觀，國外旅客成變成主要收入來源。  快餐店生意在各城鎮不斷擴充，而價格更是超值：小本餐館不受到消費者的青睞。 無他，不必要的消費可免則免　－　如今正午時氣温達３０多度，走在沒遮蔭的路上，行人對汽水販賣機提不起興趣。

綜觀原因是自九十年代初，日本經濟發展停滯不前，日本人的工資不單沒有上揚，面對經濟不景氣及鄰近國家的經濟競賽更是失去勝算。

有人云：日本所面對的改變是香港的將來，不妨作參考。