Measuring Quality in Higher Education: Can a Performance Indicator Approach be Extended to Identifying the Quality of Students' Union Provision?

The desire to enhance the quality of the services provided by higher education institutions in the UK has led to the development of a series of benchmarking performance indicators to aid the quality management process. This paper examines whether or not similar indicators could be developed for use as tools in the management of quality within students' unions. In the UK a significant part of the services that the higher education ‘customer’ (the student) receives are provided by independently run students' unions. The focus on quality maintenance and enhancement within these organisations is generally less than that found in their parent institutions. Part of any attempt by unions to increase their focus on quality is likely to involve identifying the quality of the services that they provide. In this paper the author identifies potential benchmark performance indicators for students' unions service provision and suggests that a similar approach might be appropriate in the quality management of similar student services provided by a third party.