Every educational establishment in the world, is composed of three categories of people; the Academics, the Administration staff, and the students.
Consequently,in a private establishment, the student is the customer because that student is the source of income that runs the whole establishment, while in a goverment supported establishment the Academics usually are the most influential party in the group. In both cases, the Admin group is undermined and that is why they are frequently found to complain from lack of promotion opportunities, neglected when pay hikes take place, etc because they are never the focus of attention.
Each establishment that look to improve itself, must start off by running a full and comprehensive analysis of the status quo. This analysis, has to follow several stages and focus on answering a few initial questions;
An answer that may emerge to this question; is that it is here to teach, and give students a paper, that says that they are armed with the knowledge they need to go to work. If the establishment therefore, grants students who are not armed with that knowledge a certificate, then it would lose it's reputation and people will seek graduates who get higher grades rather than employ all graduates. If on the other hand, the establishment fails a lot of student then students will complain that this is impossible to study in this establishment and if it is commercial, then it would lose it's profit margin. If on the other hand, it is government supported, then complaints would cause social pressure on the establishment to investigate the causes behind the percentage of failing students.
To answer this a critical decision must be made, as to which metric would be adopted to determine the level of knowledge that is found acceptable to "pass" a student with a certain certificate. A multitude of metrics exist in the education sector for various degrees and qualifications, and it is not difficult to select one as a basis and then work from there. However, a decision has to be made of whether; students will go to work following getting the degree; and/or they will go on to higher studies because the selection of courses, how pratical they are, etc affects this future. The measure of how much they are expected to know also differs because if a student is being prepared to take a Master's degree in the UK, or US, etc, then this student must be expected to achieve a certain level of knowledge that is internationally recognized as that sufficient for a degree. However, if one is to be conscious of how many students fail, then perhaps restricting the establishment to that high level of achievement may come at a cost of a public complaint that students are being over challenged and what they are presented with exceeds their abilities and/or expectations.
If the test expects students to know more, then it will be tough, so students will have a tough time answers the questions correctly and a larger number of them will fail. However, if we want less students to fail, the tests must be easier and more achievable to the "standard" student, so there seems to be a contradiction here.
While this will keep failure rates acceptable, a standardized subject test, that is given to every group, will allow instructors to evaluate the level of students obtaining A's, B's and C's compared to those who study before them or after them. Using the standardized test results as a metric, instructors can then try to raise the mean class grade, to a level that is regarded as acceptable. In other words, it is possible to have a test that would allow instructors to know if they are teaching students enough, or if the technique they are following has a problem etc. The metric will highlight problem areas, and allow instructors to focus on them. This need not be with official standardized tests, and may be done by a test that prepared by the educational establishment itself, according to strict criteria and be fully computerized or read by an optical reader to facilitate marking.
To be completely, honest, education is known to have three parties involved. I will make them four; the instructor, the student, the material being studied, the cognitive system of the student. An instructor is capable of controlling the classroom atmosphere so an instructor can be offered tools to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from the instructor or the book to the student. The approach followed to presenting the information and the testing scheme followed are also under the control of the instructor and by universally known standards an instructor is free to choose which method and approach to follow in a classroom. However, an instructor which is not provided with a computer/data show in his/her classroom is not capable of choose that option. I am therefore implying that before we blame an instructor for any results in student marks, we must first question the facilities that were provided and if they are regarded as sufficient by a particular course's instructors.
The second party is the student, which could be busy, preoccuppied say with a day job, tired from running around the campus to complete his/her registration papers, or simple exhausted from walking class to class. How far do the responsibilities of a student extend and what facilities can be provided to that student on campus. Please note that not all provided facilities need be free. Food is provided and is not free, so it is quite possible to investigate what facilities may encourage students to increase their learning rate. Educational competitions for example, may affect student motivation, or ensuring that most classes are not distant from each other will ensure that they are not too fatigued to concentrate in class.
The learning materials in general are mostly affected by what presentational style is followed. If the course has a book, for example, then which book is it and how clearly illustrated is it. Does it contain complete worked out examples? what other reference materials are used? Do the slides displayed in class follow the international known best practice standards in slides?
The student's cognitive system is, unfortunately, not receiving much attention in this part of the world. It includes presenting information in a way that would accomodate student cognitive preferences and to measure their learning late based on the approach followed in presenting information. A simple example, is some students like to see pictures, while others like verbal descriptions, so if some material is presented using both animation and text then students are expected to remember it more than if we just give students a book to read. Another issue that may arise here is cognitive load. If our brains are tired, then they are not likely to learn. It is extremely simple, yet influential. If students write notes during a class while an instructor is talking then are they listening or writing?
If we say, the number of graduates, then perhaps they graduated but they do not know what they should know. If we say, the amount of income the University makes, then again we have a problem with the level of graduates. If we say if the educational establishment is ranked high in the world ranks, we may recall that some of these lists are by "peer judgement" and since the country is small, it is unlikely that any amount of improvement will make it known on a world wide scale to peers.
This makes the goal of our establishment simple, and described in only 1 number that may start low, and rise with time as our improvements materialize, we can measure if they are effective or not in achieving this target. This also implies that not every new project will be evaluated as successful, because the amount spent on that project will be evaluated against how much higher it brings up this one number.