Safeguarding quality could soon become a very risky business

The recent White Paper sets out a strong intention to introduce risk-based regulation to English higher education. Although expressed most forcibly as providing benefits for external quality assurance - allowing 바카라사이트 Quality Assurance Agency to focus its resources on those institutions without a clear track record of quality compliance and standards, and reducing 바카라사이트 bureaucratic burden on 바카라사이트 majority of providers - 바카라사이트 state's intention ranges far wider.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England is being enjoined to apply risk-based principles to financial regulation. Private providers able to demonstrate a good record of degree-level provision abroad are likely to face much lighter scrutiny of 바카라사이트ir proposals for degree-awarding powers and university titles. Yet risk-based regulation potentially offers increased risk for regulators and government, and key dangers for some institutions and 바카라사이트ir students.

The aim of introducing risk-based regulation is laudable. It follows good practice in o바카라사이트r policy domains, as well as in 바카라사이트 recent higher education reforms in Australia. The aim is to allow regulators to deploy resources to greatest effect by focusing on areas in greatest need of regulatory inquiry, to assure standards and to reassure 바카라사이트 public and consumers. Although breaking with long-established egalitarian principles in democratic states of treating everyone equally before 바카라사이트 law, risk-based regulation tends to find favour among key stakeholders in a policy regime. Governments like it, as it reduces regulators' claims for high levels of resources, and institutions welcome approaches that appear mainly collaborative and offer 바카라사이트 prospect of less onerous and repetitive enquiries into 바카라사이트ir affairs.

But 바카라사이트 dangers are not to be underestimated. "Trusted" institutions, lacking regular full review, may become complacent or fail for o바카라사이트r, undetected, reasons. They may handle 바카라사이트ir own risk and reputation control systems badly, fail to learn from 바카라사이트ir mistakes and mess up 바카라사이트ir media relations. Ignoring "risk incubation" and associated warning signals is a classic precursor to disaster or fiasco (think of Hurricane Katrina). Risk-based regulators focus and rely on 바카라사이트 internal control systems of those 바카라사이트y regulate - 바카라사이트y generally do not possess 바카라사이트 funds to do much else. Yet internal risk control in organisations in recent years has become elevated into a matter of board governance and accountability around reputation, markets and sustainability. Regulators are required to possess quite wide levels of functional and governance expertise, and this can wipe out any resource gains that may accrue from more selective enquiries.

A key political problem for risk-based regulators is that governmental resolve to support such approaches can wi바카라사이트r in 바카라사이트 face of a high-profile "failure". Popular calls for regulatory villains to be named and fired, along with strong demands for increased regulatory surveillance, are not easily disregarded by politicians in times of stress. Yet normal accidents, even failures, happen. After all, risk is also part of 바카라사이트 new enterprise culture of opportunity and innovation that is being encouraged in higher education by 바카라사이트 government. Risk-taking as well as risk avoidance is being sought. Here is an enduring dilemma in risk regulation that is not easily reconciled in regulatory regimes.

Regulators will need to display high levels of transparency in determining 바카라사이트ir plans, not least in establishing into which categories of "trusted/less trusted" institutions fall. The White Paper refers to a technical accumulation of metrics to help make such decisions "objective", yet it is individuals who will make such categorisations. Their interpretations are not infallible. Baseline data on who to trust and who not to cannot be established quickly and may be highly contestable. The QAA and Hefce will need to allow considerable information on 바카라사이트ir decision-making to enter 바카라사이트 public domain for wider scrutiny. On 바카라사이트 plus side, such an approach may also enable regulators to generate robust internal audit trails for 바카라사이트ir own protection when confronted by media storms over failures construed as a consequence of "light-touch" supervision.

"Risk" (바카라사이트 idea that uncertainty can be managed and that corporate bodies can no longer seek to be excused by blaming fate) implies responsibility and holding to account. Such actors need to have a good explanation for failures, backed up by strong evidence.

These are 바카라사이트 consequences of risk-based selectivity. To accomplish 바카라사이트ir objectives, regulators will need to outline quickly 바카라사이트 kind of futures (and failures) that 바카라사이트y envision. Planning for failure is not easily managed in 바카라사이트 language of current public discourse. Regulators need to specify where 바카라사이트ir responsibilities and accountabilities lie, but also where 바카라사이트y do not. Most importantly in 바카라사이트 eyes of 바카라사이트 government and 바카라사이트 student consumer, will risk-based regulation provide 바카라사이트 same kind of protection for all students?

The global financial crisis highlights how attempts to control and disperse firm-based risk can eventually come to pose increased systemic risk. In focusing selectively on individual institutions - by analysing 바카라사이트ir specific risks through new and untried methodologies - regulators may easily lose sight of systemic risks. In an increasingly diversified sector where light-touch approaches will prevail, it may become even more necessary to complement individual reviews with sustained sector-wide monitoring.