The Notion of Quality in Higher Education and its Main Components. A State of the Art

Abstract

Given the polysemic and multidimensional nature of the notion of quality and its growing relevance in higher education, it is necessary to lay the foundations for conceptualizing it in terms of its context of application, in order to provide support and consistency to the design of specific policies. This paper presents the main methodological guidelines and findings of an exhaustive literature review focused on identifying the conceptions and main components of quality in higher education in papers published in high-impact international journals between 2016-2020. Following the axial guidelines of the PRISMA-P method, 186 articles were selected out of 53,290 identified as part of the initial universe. Analysis was carried out using open inductive coding. The main findings achieved were the following: the main components of quality in higher education correspond to various aspects of the educational establishment (organization, management, material resources, learning environment), and, contrary to expectations, there is no significant correlation between the components regarded as the most relevant and the empirical strategies used for its characterization (quantitative, qualitative, mixed), nor between those main components and the units of analysis concerned (students, teachers and lecturers, managers, staff members, graduates, employers).