University of Twente Student Theses
Quality agreements in intermediate vocational education: shift towards public value management?
Zijlstra, Pim (2018) Quality agreements in intermediate vocational education: shift towards public value management?
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| Abstract: | Our rapidly changing labour market demands MBO graduates of a higher quality who are more flexible (Ministerie van Onderwijs Cultuur en Wetenschap, 2017). A government plan called ’Focus op vakmanschap’ implemented between 2011 and 2015 made programs shorter, better and more intense and was meant to increase the output of vocational education in the Netherlands. Output is generally defined as what is produced by an organization and is usually expressed in statistics. In vocational education this concerns statistics such as dropout rate, study success, amount of students that graduate in a particular year etc. From 2015 quality agreements between MBO colleges and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science were introduced as a new steering device meant to shift the attention to outcome: this is generally defined as the consequences and result of the output of an organization which in vocational education concerns the quality of MBO graduates and society in general. In 2015, the MBO colleges were given the opportunity to draw up a quality plan in which they were to integrate quality improvements. Based on their quality plan, the MBO colleges received a budget from the ministry. In this thesis, three governance paradigms are used to analyze the impact of quality plans on the management of MBO colleges. Central to this thesis is the paradigm of public value management: ’public value’ is a core concept in this paradigm and can be described as ’what citizens want’. The aim of this thesis is to answer the following research question: “To what extent can we observe a shift in management approach towards public value management at the ROC van Twente following the introduction of the quality agreements in vocational education in The Netherlands.” Through desk research and face-to-face interviews with staff members of the ”ROC van Twente”, we analyzed the management and governance of the ROC van Twente before and after the introduction of the quality agreements. 4 The interviewees thought that, regarding the characteristics goals and stakeholders, elements of public value management are increasingly visible. This is supported by an interesting finding from the annual reports which regards the increasing role of the central student council. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 88 social and public administration |
| Programme: | Management Society and Technology BSc (56654) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/74906 |
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