Ying Chen

Universities have recognised the pivotal role they play in advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to build a sustainable society. Two quality assessment instruments in higher education, global rankings and quality assurance , have developed a new set of metrics to measure university commitment to SDGs. This paper aims to analyse the SDGs advancement of Taiwan's 46 universities listed in THE Impact Ranking 2022 in response to the emerging sustainability metrics developed by global rankings and national accreditation, and to explore the purposes, institutional strategies and challenges they encountered. Major findings are as follows. Firstly, competitive advantage is the key reason driving universities for SDGs implementation. Secondly, the common strategy is to align university social responsibility project with general education curriculum. Thirdly, SDGs data reliability, internal quality assurance (IQA) mechanism establishment, intersectoral coordination and faculty and student engagement are the key challenges for SDGs implementation in Taiwan's universities.

Purpose: In 2022, the International Network for Quality Assurance (QA) Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) published the new guidelines by adding three QA modules in response to the changing higher education landscape. The paper aims to investigate the transformative focus of quality assurance in higher education globally as well as Asian response to three new QA modules according to the INQAAHE ISGs.Design/methodology/approach: The research conducted a quantitative approach for data collection. An on-line survey was conducted to perceive QA practices, perceptions toward new emerging QA modules and challenges encountered. In total, there were 26 responses from 18 territories with 22 QA agencies. A total of 13 out of them have a national qualifications framework in place.Findings: Three are three major findings in the study. First, national policy and criteria and standards in distance education have been developed in the majority of Asian nations. Second, non-signatories of the Tokyo Convention had a higher proportion of having related policies, regulations and criteria in CBHE and distance education. Third, national policies and regulations; and lack of professional staff are two common challenges implementing QA in new types of providers.Originality/value: The findings are of value for policymakers, QA agencies and universities to advocate the new QA model as a systematic approach in response to changing higher education landscape in the post pandemic era.

Purpose: This paper aimed to explore the development of distance education (DE) in Chinese higher education as well as the three significant themes: accessibility, quality and equity in Chinese DE and the performance of these three themes in Chinese DE.Design/methodology/approach: Document analysis was used as the major research method in this study to examine the development and challenges in terms of accessibility, quality and equity in Chinese DE. In this study, national-level official policy documents and reports from the Chinese government were collected and analyzed. Also, scientific articles from CNKI were analyzed to find out the evolution of the Frontier topics on Chinese DE in accessibility, quality and equity.Findings: There are three major findings. First, the Chinese government has shown its positive attitude toward DE in higher education. Second, compared with the other two themes: quality and equity; the number of articles in the accessibility of DE was lower than the other two themes and the problems of accessing online courses were insufficiently caused by two reasons due to lack of basic ICT literacy and poor Internet infrastructure. Third, there was a gap between Chinese policies and research articles mainly because of the unbalanced development of accessibility in policy management and research articles.Research limitations/implications: Although this paper has summarized the development of the DE in Chinese higher education, it was clear that accessibility, quality and equity were three critical issues in DE. However, there are still other essential factors that contribute to the development of DE that requires further investigation, such as learner satisfaction, different features of learning platforms and instructional strategy.Practical implications: The findings of this paper can be used to identify the attitude toward the DE of the Chinese government. Besides, the accessibility could be a research and practical focus for Chinese DE in the future.Originality/value: This study showed some significant policies released by the Chinese government toward DE in higher education and revealed the achievements, trends and challenges in the accessibility, quality and equity of Chinese DE.